


Un Coup de Foudre

by CryingKilljoy



Series: The Nocebo Effect [1]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Art, Bands, BoyxBoy, Fluff, France (Country), French Characters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 51,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6177583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryingKilljoy/pseuds/CryingKilljoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Un coup de foudre: "a strike of lightning"; love at first sight.<br/>Until the words "there is a new student joining us" are uttered, Brendon Urie is completely alone. The new student, it turns out, is a French psychology nerd by the name of Dallon Weekes, clad in dark-toned scarves and deep pockets to store all the pills he's taking. Placebo, he tells them. No one questions it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hmu if u like rats

Until the words "there is a new student joining us" were uttered, I was completely alone, but as I said, that was before.

Things get better from here — I swear.

♫♫♫♫

There's a dysfunction in the clock — it adds incorrectly, appalling the overlord of numbering, which would unanimously be myself.

I count everything, even if I attempt to block it out from my conscious mind, but it's still as present as before, ticking away in a space even smaller than a second. I count heartbeats strung into a monotonous line, steps bounced into existence, pulls on a bar retrieved from muscle, everything under the sun.

Counting calories is my specialty, though, but not in some neurotic way that dictates the notion that a twenty inch waistline is the only acceptable size, but then again, counting things is perhaps judged neurotic by many people.

The only thing that breaks me away from my tedious game of tallying is the shuddering of the door across from the window, my librarian-esque teacher sliding through with her crimson nails clutching a sheepish boy whose locks are the hue of a raven's feathers.

The woman, Ms. Gunnulfsen, seems quite devoid of breath, judging by her heaving shoulders and shallow pulses of oxygen, for her enthusiasm redirects itself into the kid rocking beside her.

The class watches in awe as Ms. Gunnulfsen's hands pound the desk for stability, our eyes flickering with ambiguous intrigue and blatant curiosity.

"There is a new student joining us," our teacher finally announces, extremities clutching the area around her collarbones. "His name is Dallon Weekes, from the city of Bordeaux, which is all the way in France!" She cups her palm around her mouth to convey a message intended only for her students. "Please forgive him — his English isn't very developed."

My eyeliner-clad friend, Ryan Ross, leans over, whispering, "Is she drunk or something?"

I shrug.

"Actually, my English is quite fluent," the new kid corrects in his mellifluous French accent, nervousness ordering him to scratch his neck right around his aegean scarf that hangs loosely around his shoulders instead of being folded in some complex way like they do on the television commercials for decadent fashion products.

Ms. Gunnulfsen nods in her daze. "Yeah, that's good, too."

After a prolonged moment of absolute silence — beyond the anxious shuffling of shoes upon the linoleum and the random scratching of pencils into paper — Dallon inquires, "Where shall I be sitting?"

From the way Ms. Gunnulfsen stiffens at the departure of the new kid's words, anyone could tell she had been caught off guard (perhaps a slow response time due to intoxication), and on instinct, she points to the only available arrangement, the spot no one dares to occupy — the one right in front of the teacher's desk, and by definition, the one farthest away from me.

I've been glued to the same seat since the beginning of ninth grade, when we first attended Ms. Gunnulfsen's remarkably ponderous history class and ended up being placed in the same classroom for the next year, so it's not like I'm giving up my seat just so this French guy can survive; I would be worse off up there than he would.

Because of this loyalty to my chair, I've earned a reputation of glory, and though my peers may be envious of my position, they don't dare cross me for fear of dismemberment; I'm not quite sure why they expect such things for me, but it's proven to be effective.

The children whisper frantically to each other, narrating their opinions on Dallon's harrowing future. Some are glad that he received that area — better him than them, right? — while others pity him with intentions of going to church just to pray further.

It's not like he's dying, though. Yet.

♫♫♫♫

"Brendon, may I speak with you for a moment?" Ms. Gunnulfsen requests, continuing to capture her breath with the support of her desk as I saunter over to her, perhaps saving the woman some trouble.

"What do you need?" I almost answer for myself, narrating a brief "emotional support", but that would be both rude and reneging on my promise of never uttering rhetorical questions in this class, and I'd rather not find myself on the list of people Ms. Gunnulfsen is out to kill.

Life is a bore, yes, but this woman retains the lightning quick reflexes of a ninja and just as many weapons most likely hidden in an ostensibly innocuous desk drawer, and I'd prefer not to be shredded apart by someone I know to be my off-kilter history teacher.

"Would you mind being Dallon's English tutor? I've seen your grammar skills from your essays, and you and Ryan are the only people in this class who know the difference between your and you're." A look of pleading brews in Ms. Gunnulfsen's hickory irises, a phenomenon I've never before analyzed in her, and I've prided myself on not upsetting people, especially when they control my grades, so I accept, no matter how absurd this all is.

"Dallon has already professed to his fluent English, but in case he needs something, I'll be sure to help him out."

A smile of relief pirouettes on the woman's face, staring at me for much longer than is needed until she comes to her senses and ejects me from her service. "Thanks so much, Mr. Urie."

"Dallon is going to hate this," I mutter on my course out the door and into the bustling hallway. "At least Ms. Gunnulfsen won't, though."

♫♫♫♫

"Can you please point me towards the cafeteria?" a lilting voice questions, bouncing its finger up and down on my shoulder twice to grab my attention.

As I spin to showcase my back to the lockers, the crystal eyes of Dallon Weekes arrest me, back me up into the wall. From far away, they're mere specks lost in a sea of alternate masculine features, but up close, one is able to detect tiny dots of black (common in eyes such as his), not only from the pupil but from the fashion of his irises.

Much prettier than my chocolate ones, I must say.

Like a lethargic train, I sputter, "Uh, yeah, I could take you, if you'd like."

Why am I doing this? I usually go to lunch with Ryan, but considering the circumstances, I'd rather not find myself on the new kid's bad side, considering they're the ones that capture all the engrossment of the original students. It has its benefits.

Dallon's dimples crease his face in the same manner as paper in origami — beautiful and intricate, worthy of honor — and his marble teeth line up in a row for their grand appearance. " _Merci beaucoup_."

My brow climbs. "I thought you said your English was good."

"Fucking Americans," Dallon chuckles, brushing a strand of hair from his face. "I'd like to hold on to some of my culture, yeah?"

"In that case" — my locker bangs against its hinges, commanded by a flick of my hand — " _Ce n'est rien_."

♫♫♫♫

"You're a bitch, Brendon Urie," Ryan dictates, using my head for support as he swings his legs over the bench to sit down at the table. I've come to learn that he can be _very_ dramatic.

"Of course I am," I agree, shoveling an abbreviated fry into my mouth. "But what did I do this time?"

Dallon's aqua eyes scan our faces — Ryan's exasperated one and mine, adorned with a shit-eating grin — and looks quite amused. Is he going to be the next gossip queen at this school? Honestly, I can't deal with people like that, so it's either join our squad of gaylords or get the fuck out.

"You didn't wait for me by the lockers."

A playful grin dismisses any diplomacy I could've stored inside me for its own obnoxious games, a fry luging between its walls. "How does it feel to be so dependent on someone to walk you to lunch? Am I your prom date now?"

Ryan flicks his own fry at me, missing by a few inches yet not caring at all. "Rat ass."

"Speaking of dependent" — I swivel towards Dallon, who is surprised to suddenly be the center of the conversation — "Mrs. Gunnulfsen says I'm your new English tutor. I have no idea why, but we should devise a schedule."

"But I don't need an English tutor," Dallon drawls, glancing between Ryan and me for a solution to his bewilderment.

"Then our sessions will be extremely fun, now won't they?"

Dallon fidgets uncomfortably, vision poised over a landscape foreign to my perspective to avoid meeting me. "I guess."

My vigor plummets. "You seem unexcited."

"What's the point of having an English tutor if you don't need it?"

"You can have an excuse to hang around me." I provide an enthusiastic thumbs up, and I swear I can detect the trail of a simper tracing Dallon's lemonade lips.

The Frenchman finally relents after weighing the possibilities of this newfound friendship and discovering nothing counterproductive. "If you insist."

"Watch out, Dallon," Ryan warns with a detached view in his platter of poor nutrition. "Brendon's going to teach you way more than you needed to know. He might even teach you mathematics as well."

For a second time I see Dallon's pearl teeth glimmer in the seat of their gums, and it's ecstasy to know that they're pointed towards me. "I don't see anything wrong with that."

Reciprocating the seemingly infectious sensation, I nod to seal the deal. "Then meet me in Ms. Gunnulfsen's room after school. She's always gone by then."

"Sounds like a plan."

We're just silent for a few moments, partially imagining what our adventures will hold, partially imagining the consequences for disobeying the official guidelines of this assignment, partially not giving a shit either way.

"Oh my god," Ryan whines, catapulting yet another fry at us. "You're already gay for each other."

And Dallon just laughs, knowing full well that Ryan's correct.

 


	2. a sky full of art hoes

“Kara, I’m home!” I yell, clicking the door shut behind me and my newly found friend.

My sister emerges from the living room with a sketchpad tucked under her arm, posture transitioning from a slouch to a neat stick upon seeing the unfamiliar figure clinging to my side in nervousness.

“Who is this?” she asks once glancing at Dallon long enough to recognize that there’s someone different in the house and solely focusing on me.

The boy steps forward to greet my sister with a gentle kiss to the hand, perhaps typical of his French customs, perhaps just manipulating Americans’ perception of them, anyway charming. “I’m Dallon.”

Kara is still trained on me for answers to her blunt questions, clarifying, “He’s French?” and met with a nod from the man himself. “So why is he here? Did you make a friend for once?”

Dallon is innocuous towards this, scavenging my face for destruction with his glimmering eyes, now slightly perturbed by the thought that my sister and I hate each other enough to criticize our natural disposition towards people, and it’s clear that he’ll soon propose to absorb the damage for me if I don’t want to, but the thing I don’t want the most if for him to get wrapped up in this petty sibling rivalry and break himself more dramatically than is needed, so I just ignore Kara and sort through my backpack.

“Are you tutoring him?” Kara presses, alternating between me and Dallon in a frenzied storm, like a sleuth on patrol for a news story.

She’s done this for as long as I can remember, all just to aggravate me until I do what she requested earlier, and it’s been working forever, as much as I wish it wouldn’t, but I’m weak, and it’s my job to take care of her, so part of this ease is necessary for my unofficial profession.

That part only accounts for half of me, though, because while I’m attending to Kara at home, my sister Kyla, who’s now living the persistent dream in New York city, institutes a steady flow of money towards us so that I can continue with my vocation of feeding my younger sister, and it’s been effective since she’s graduated from college and witnessed the death of both of my parents due to a monstrous event that I’ve suppressed for better dreams, so now Kara and I are living together without a care in the world about parental guidance, and we’ve been desensitized to the fact that we’re not like the other kids our age, because we never were.

We’ve both been bullied for it, too, and residual scraps of that malevolence still manifests to this day in the panging over locker doors on their frames as it pierces my stomach with fear, with the notion that I’ll never trust a teacher to help me through anything, with even the physical sensation of being slammed against a wall and threatened with things unimaginable to anyone who can’t see that there has never been a light in this tunnel, that we are hopeless.

Kara would sometimes come home in tears, but she would not once discuss what had happened, and it was up to me to realize that she was being berated by people that should’ve been her friends in a place that should’ve saved her from any of this occurring, but they weren’t, and it didn’t, and I knew that she was passing through the same hell I was, but I couldn’t relate to anything about it, because I’m not sure that she would let me.

And she’s mutilated that submission so that it’s obnoxiousness, and she’s fighting against me like before, and as much as I respect what she’s been through, I can only tolerate it half of the time.

“Yeah, now shove off.”

Dallon is disinterested, vision dogging the area behind the screen door, dichotomized by wooden panes, to discover an easel with numerous blank sheets of paper plastered to it, and his intrigue is then piqued, stalking him as he saunters towards the art equipment.

“Where are you going?” I call, turning my head from my backpack.

Dallon instead neglects me, shouting, “Do you paint, Kara?” so that he can be heard over our incessant bickering.

My sister enters the room the same way the man had come, leaning against the door that she’s shoved back to allow cohesion for her light, adolescent body and watching Dallon marvel at all of the art supplies with an amused grin tying her lips at their rosy ends. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Can I see some paintings?”

“Nothing’s good enough to display.” Kara worries her bottom lip, wringing her hands at the acute anxiousness of having her art mentioned. “Sorry about that.”

Dallon relieves her concerns with a cheerful smile, bouncing moderately on the stool by the easel. “That’s okay, just as long as you’re comfortable.”

“Do you paint?” Kara investigates like the sleuth she aspires to be, counting on dinner table conversations to express how much she adores Scotland Yard, but most of that digression is just to divert the attention from her premature art skills.

“Quite a lot.”

Kara’s complexion illuminates with a bright peach, hands shuddering in excitement. “Would you show me?”

“Of course.” Dallon loops a paintbrush around his fingers and swipes the hair behind his ears as it caresses random textures on his skin, preparing for a masterpiece that he’ll no doubt spin with leisure. “Hey, Brendon, get in here!”

I have no idea why Dallon’s summoning me towards the art space, considering I’m the least talented person he’ll ever meet and prefer concrete subjects like English and history, but my task is to help him through America, and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in some painting, especially if there’s a benefit to my creative abilities in store for me.

Once I enter the room, Dallon’s irises flare, begging me to join him, then fluctuating between an elated sunflower and a restless cobalt as I take my seat on the stool next to him.

“Do you enjoy finger painting?”

Of all the things he could’ve shown my sister, he chose finger painting, the least complex practice in art, the thing taught to kindergarten students with the premonition that the place will be splattered with color by the time they’re finished, and not in a beautiful way, but in a way that screams of muddy browns and messy wars between hues as they protest mingling with each other, and Dallon doesn’t seem the type to thrive in those circumstances, rather an art gallery where he will find his own paintings strung on the walls of elegance.

“Not really. Finger painting is dirty.”

“Just try it,” Dallon beseeches me, a jovial trot in his voice as he weathers my hands in his to encourage my participation.

“Whatever.” I select a magenta paintbrush out of the million other tools, all herded in a cup that’s been bitten by our old dog far too many times to array, and I gather a clipboard in my hands after peeling a sheet of paper from the easel with a latent grudge towards my friend, who’s now hurrying off to his piece by plunging a thumb into a well of scarlet.

“There’s a certain art to this, you know.”

Kara studies Dallon intently, fascination flickering with each stroke slashed into the paper canvas to produce objects and lines and things that can only be deciphered with the assistance of another mark and are suddenly the most magnificent things a human can ever behold. She’s saturated by all of the possibilities of finger painting that were previously out of her reach until Dallon unearthed them, and it’s obvious that she’s itching to try it for herself, but she guards herself within her boundaries.

“You can make amazing things with just your thumb and some paint.”

And it’s true, for Dallon’s creation is the most realistic craft I’ve ever witnessed that originates from finger painting, the verisimilitude so striking that it’s difficult to rip my spotlight from it and redirect myself towards my dinky picture of a tree. A face materializes from circles splotched by the identifying lines of a hand and whisked out in a spiral to include a familiar touch to it, and the face, I come to understand, is Kara.

My sister is now beaming at what Dallon has done, and he reciprocates the joy while rolling the paintbrush between his extremities like a cigarette.

“This is so cool!” she squeals, hopping once, rushing over to the masterpiece, gazing admirably at it.

I have to admit that Dallon’s creation is much better than anything I ever could’ve made, but I’m not envious of his talent, either. It’s so spectacular that even looking at it is a treat for the soul, and if Dallon can do such a thing with _finger paint_ , then it’ll be quite the surprise when I see what he can do with other mediums.

Keeping an artist as a friend is both an extremely wondrous and extremely frustrating ordeal, because they can spew out philosophical amphigories in the form of wordless shades of pain and ecstasy and everything in between, but they’ll never take requests. They’ll feel from the heart, and if Dallon is truly my friend now, that’s exactly what I want.

Because if I can’t feel my own heart, I know that he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I LOVE DALLON AND KARA'S RELATIONSHIP THROUGHOUT THIS OKAY
> 
> (AND NO, THIS IS NOT PEDOPHILIA; THEY'RE ONLY FRIENDS JESUS WHY IS PEDOPHILIA SO COMMON IN FICS THAT I HAVE TO SPECIFY THIS OML)
> 
> Quinshin: what is your opinion on rats?
> 
> Ainswin: okay I fuckiing love rats omg I think this started as a joke but rats are actually rly cute tbh
> 
> ~Ratkota


	3. gay is ok

The hallways are usually empty during this minuscule era, the kids having flocked nervously to their second period class after a boring first, which makes the corridors all the more susceptible to testimony, as the most frequent bullying anecdotes occur at this time.

Before first period (and even while it’s transpiring) there will always be the stragglers who have made it in late to school, and they’d be the perfect witnesses to the crime, so no one dares to strike then. What better time than after first period, right? Only the few children back from the orthodontist will be there to see the terror, but they wouldn’t say a thing about it, because they know the consequences, so that leaves the teachers, who are only ever present before school starts because they’re required to monitor the halls, but after that they’re gone with the wind.

The bullies pull themselves from the shadows after that, mincing their faces with a smirk until they’re no longer recognizable and only signify the impending doom that you’re about to encounter while you slowly suffocate under their constricting threats.

Then you have to pretend that you know nothing about what just happened, even if your life is at stake, because it’s every man for himself in this school, and people would rather harm you than help you. It’s Machiavellian warfare, and the bullies like that. Especially between first and second period.

I’ve memorized this schedule in case I’ll ever need it, and I did, but that was a while ago. Even so, I’ve come to understand that this school and its inhabitants prey on the ignorance of their peers to gain leverage against them for whatever they seem to want — drugs, money, the occasional fame, you name it. They made a pretty convincing case, and everyone soon feared the time between first and second period.

This fear has latched onto me ever since I learned that I needed it to survive in this place, but I swore that its purpose was through. I was wrong. Spencer Smith and his gang of two are still hunting me down, pinning me against a locker with a sneer as they know that I’ve been frightened of them since day one. They feed off of the insecurities of people who come here to learn, and they win every trial they undergo. They’re victorious — victorious from the moment you spot them, victorious when they lean into you until your skin is shaved with their cutting breath as they whisper a warning that in no way is pertinent to what you’ve been doing lately, because you know you’re innocent, but no one else does, and I’ve found myself inside of this catch.

“So I heard you’ve been tutoring that new kid, yeah?” Spencer snarls, punctuated outwardly by the laughs of the faithful Brent Wilson and Jon Walker.

“What does it matter?”

“I didn’t know you were a faggot. I always suspected it, but there’s no proof.”

Brent waits excitedly for Spencer to roast me, or whatever the hell it is that these dunces loyally do without end, clinging to every syllable scraped from the bully’s tongue.

Spencer chuckles dryly, narrowing in on me with a derisive gleam marching over his hickory irises, and arrows of saliva pierce my flesh. “Until now.”

I squirm within Spencer’s capture but only greeting the chilled metal of my locker, exactly where I started, and I rely on my words to rescue me from my helplessness. “I’m just tutoring him.”

“Not when you’re a faggot like you.”

And then the punches rain down like a storm, each fist to the face a chunk of hail the size of a tennis ball parading around my complexion until it’s soiled in boysenberry, but they’re soon halted by an unexpected hero that not even I expected. He’s sneaky like that, I suppose, primarily noting when he crept into my birthday party and became friends with me, and that connection is still as tight as his skinny jeans.

“Hey, shove off, rat asses,” a voice commands, more tired with the fact that he has to clean up this mess than the bullies’ antics themselves.

The villains prepare to cachinnate at the sight of a scrawny Ryan Ross salvaging me from the fire of their hatred for me, for tutoring a new French student upon demand of my teacher, for generally being clueless about what the hell is going on, but the high schooler slips away with me in his grasp before anyone can squeal about how I’m once again a faggot for needing this mouse of a kid to save me. Ryan frankly doesn’t care.

“Hey, are you all right?” he asks, not once looking back at the cackling band of bullies on his route to English class.

“Fine as always.”

“Yeah, that’s bullshit, but I’ll take it because your masculinity is fragile.”

“It is not!” I yelp, perhaps proving Ryan’s point more than I intended to.

“Whatever.” My friend pushes open the door to Ms. Claret’s English course, collecting an array of emotions such as jealousy for missing a limited portion of class, indifference in the hopes that they won’t be regarded as a gossip queen, confusion upon realizing that we’re actually in the same grade as them, everything under the glaring sun of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ms. Claret glances up from her Shakespeare pamphlet, mocking surprise, but is hastily snuffed out by Ryan’s unwillingness to discuss why he’s five minutes late to class with a bleeding Brendon Urie locked into his fingers and subsequently shoved into the seat, but such is to be predicted from someone like Ryan Ross, considering his motives are as messy as his hair and his alacrity just as implacable, and his stunning personality is furthered by his phlegmatic approach to this whole thing, the Shakespeare pamphlet protruding from his palms as quickly as he settles into the chair.

Dallon’s countenance contracts a disease of anguish and befuddlement, projecting a concerned narrowing of the eyes to express that he has no idea what happened to me and plans to find out, because he’s Dallon Weekes and seems persistent enough to draw at least a bit of information out of me. Part of me is willing to tell him what he wants to know, but I’m still traumatized by what passed my head today and what passed my head earlier in high school.

Eventually Ms. Chantal catches on and grants us permission to step into the hallway, much to Ryan’s disapproval or maybe just the wish that he could join us, and Dallon is immediately the grieving housewife that I had foretold.

“What happened to you, Brendon Boyd Urie?”

I ignore my friend’s knowledge of my middle name to sigh, because I really don’t want to get into detail about what happened, chiefly because it involves him, and disclosing this information will surely turn him away from my tutoring services. We’re becoming friends, and I’ll finally have one other than Ryan (and sometimes Kara, but not often, as we despise each other when it’s convenient), so having Dallon here is a blessing from the nonexistent heavens, and I aspire to sustain it to the best of my abilities. Sharing this news with Dallon is not the way to do that, but the waters of pleading sloshing in his ice-laden eyes is enough to change my mind, however slightly.

“Do you honestly want to know?” I groan, just to stall, because even though I only met Dallon yesterday, I don’t want to hurt him. There’s a friendship on the line, and I surmise that’s a bit selfish of me to prioritize, but once I get to know him I’ll be completely certain that he’s worth it all.

I already know he is.

“You’re my friend. Your safety is important to me.”

All I can do is stare at Dallon in awe of his bravery, his kindness, his qualities that no one else ever bothered to show to me, and I would cry if my masculinity weren’t as fragile as Ryan claims it is. “That means a lot.”

“Yeah” is his hushed murmur, maintained with a simper until he promptly replaces it for diplomacy and a yearning for answers.

“Spencer and his ‘lit posse’, as he likes to call it, decided that it would be fruitful to slam me against a locker and tease me for being a faggot or whatever.”

“Are you a faggot?” Dallon’s brow clips to an elevated terrain of his forehead, ordering me to stop and think for a second, and that second is the worst one I’ve ever experienced. If Dallon’s acclimated to introspection like I judge him, then he might force me to be the same, and I’m not ready to dive into the hollows of my mind to extract something that will only terrify me.

I shift uneasily, hammering my shoe into the slippery tile of the high school corridor. “Well...yeah.”

“Then it shouldn’t matter,” Dallon laughs heartily, dropping the subject as his extremities coast over my shoulder in reassurance and lead me closer to the door of Ms. Chantal’s classroom.

It does matter, but it’s not like I’m going to tell him that. Dallon is my friend, a new friend at that, and I need to maintain a healthy relationship for once in my life. Dallon is the person to guide me through that. I hope he’s ready to catch me when I fall — fall in love.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: every chapter this far has included some part at the end about them falling in love with each other like what am I doing
> 
> I already ship it tho
> 
> Queoichoin: What's the weirdest thing your school does?
> 
> Anuinsochon: Mine has a monitor thing where it can see what you're doing and close your tabs but I write gay fanfiction at school so when I used "faggot" (lmao don't say that it's rude) I had to write "llama" because didn't want that sneaker fletcher creeping up on me and telling everyone that I write homophobic fluff porn
> 
> ~Da[n]k[meme]ota


	4. cumslut!ryan

“Tell me if you see anyone interesting.” Ryan is wholly poised towards the street near our coffee shop, La Mystique (Ryan thought it would be a witty cultural joke), and none of us really know what he’s aiming for, not even him. He’s desperate after Dallon came to town, and I can’t blame him. He’s not homophobic or anything — not that he would need to be in the simple profession of tutoring — just possessive.

“Interesting?”

“Yeah,” Ryan clarifies, sight still cresting the sidewalk in pursuit of anyone with whom he can converse, seeing as his best friend, which would unanimously be me, is now pouring his attention into the quirky new French student that’s more parts confusing than secure.

“I think you’ll have to explain. I’m quite simple minded.”

A flower of a smile blooms on the corner of Dallon’s lips, a rose like him, as he works to blend lines into the napkin that was originally intended to guard the coffee cup but is now his makeshift canvas, thin like a guitar string and just as taut, a knowing expression.

Ryan is frustrated by my unwittingly oblique remark, even if it furthers his perception of me that dictates that I’m a blunt fool, but he doesn’t regard me. “Do you see anyone that would be compatible with me now that you’re all lovey dovey with this French kid?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“And why is that?” Ryan’s brow staples to his banged forehead accusingly, as if I’ve done something wrong in questioning his unfound motives.

Barely parting my sanguine lips, I flash a fleeting response and lift the coffee cup to my mouth as I fling my focus away from him so that I won’t be accountable for my rolling eyes. “Because you’re so far up your own ego that you don’t need anyone else.”

My odd friend’s emotional pain metamorphoses into physical pain with the quieted blow of a fist to the stomach, poisoning his diction as well. “Once again, you’re a fucking bitch, Brendon Urie.”

“I _do_ try” is my chuckled response.

Dallon says nothing, only reacting in subdued fluctuations upon his face while the pencil still itches at the jagged terrain of the napkin. As far as I can tell, his creation is moving along nicely, with the ostensibly random marks coalescing into something that he won’t show me, just sheltering it with his hand until the grand finale.

I nudge him. “What are you making?”

“None of your business.” Concluding that Dallon’s reply was a tad too harsh, his voice mitigates into a silenced honey that only materializes with close concentration. “You’ll see soon enough.”

“I want to see now.”

“Well are aren’t you demanding?” he laughs, transforming an uncomfortable situation into a latent tactic for stalling, but I can recognize my own kind and can just as well shut down their schemes so that they then favor me.

“I’m fascinated by your art.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I’m sure.”

“Hey, can you cut it out?” Ryan wails, a useless quibble to our flamboyant homosexual ways that won’t ever end. He’ll just have to move out, whether that be out of our future apartment or our lives, and as much as I don’t want him to leave, annoying him safely will have to suffice, because there has to be torment to some extent.

“What, are you still scouting out fellow cumsluts?” Dallon quips in return.

Ryan’s eyes bleed to slits, scowling into the very espresso that matches his hair color deftly. “Really funny.”

“I still can’t configure if you’re joking or not, if this is some display of satire.” Dallon siphons his pencil to his lips in thought, comprehending that Ryan won’t ever answer his question as well as he himself could. “You seem like that kind of guy.”

Ryan hums halfway through his sip, portraying a phlegmatic man with a plethora of contradictions in actuality, judging from the way he’s chasing a kid down the street just with the intensity of his stare. He’s become desperate since yesterday, even if he didn’t reflect it earlier and left me to think that everything is all right, and maybe this is just Ryan’s dramatic personality, and maybe this is just a game whose implications he’ll reveal once I’ve stumbled enough, and maybe this is just him — Ryan Ross, the drama queen of Palo Verde High School and unapologetically so.

I’m confident in saying that Ryan could probably consume the entire world if he wished, all through the combination of his bullshit and his smarts, and in the rare event that he would include me in his plans, he would end up dazzling me with the same delirium he’s forced upon the others, wrapped up neatly in a gossipping blog post.

But he’s so aloof, so detached from the world, that people could tell him anything and he would pretend like he doesn’t care while secretly formulating the same gossipping blog post that’ll score him the world, and when he’s not doing that, he’s vying for his own goals in other fields of impracticality and abandoning me in the hopes that I’ll figure out what the hell he’s doing and join him in that, but so far he hasn’t been successful. I will have no part in his wild adventures — today’s excursion included.

So all I do is watch Ryan scout out some potential friends, starting with the material of their flannels and the tightness of their skinny jeans as an indicator of whether or not they’re suitable candidates for whatever it is he has whirring in that cryptic brain of his. (I never get into detail, because quite frankly I’m terrified at what he’s doing most of the time). He comes up empty-handed, though nevertheless ambitious with the plum elation fizzing in his irises.

I’d rather not aid Ryan in his deception of sanity, so I instead study Dallon as his fingers slash across the napkin to sew the finishing touches into his artwork. He continues to shield the creation from me with a shy flicker of excitement pruning his cheeks into apple-carved greens, and the mundane preservation of this disposition is suddenly all that’s on my mind.

“The coffee’s good, isn’t it?” I muse, hallowing the cup within my palms to spark a conversation after being left by Ryan to search for boys, and Dallon to apply beauty into a world where it is lacking.

“Splendid.” Dallon’s head is still tipped downward, proving my mission a failure. “For Americans,” he adds, again shaming the country to which he moved and rendering his presence here a bit ironic.

“Is the coffee better in France?”

My friend laughs, amused by my oblivity. “Everything’s better in France.”

“What about the freedom?”

Dallon finally tosses his head towards me, winking for the hyperbolic effects of farce. “Well you got me there.” Then tapping a line into the napkin, he includes, “By the way, when do I get to visit your bald eagle? Every good American has one, or better yet, thirteen for each of the original colonies.”

“You’ve gone too far, kid,” Ryan comments in lieu of me, likening to what I would’ve said if I weren’t cut off by the guy who’s paused his manhunting activities to address the fact that Dallon is patronizing this very nation in which we faithfully reside. He’s not so much of a patriot as he is an obnoxious teen who likes to nettle us incessantly — and adeptly, I might add.

“Are you ready to go, Dallon?” I inquire as I reserve the politest tone I can muster, rising and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder to peer over at his work.

“Yeah, just a minute.” Tearing the pencil into the napkin one last time, my friend stands along with me and reveals a chance for me to understand what it is that he’s been making for the past thirty minutes.

And what he’s been making is spectacular, not that I doubted it in the least, and it’s not so much the content that’s spectacular. Instead, it’s Dallon’s precise blade that created it, as if I wallow in a portion of his heart and have been spilled onto the page by the magnificence and power of his love for me, or whatever it is that he considers fascinating about who I am.

A drawing of me is ironed onto the napkin, or — more accurately — a drawing of my fingers suspended midway through a sporadic tapping motion. There’s nothing unique about them, but the essence of Dallon’s drawing makes it seem like they are, even through their peculiar bruises and their variegated pigmentation and their protruding veins that shouldn’t protrude as they do, but Dallon crafts a lie of beauty that no one can argue, and maybe with his help I’ll realize that I’m beautiful just as I am and don’t need his drawings to accentuate that.

I’ll always love them, though. I feel that I’ll always love _him_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: they're already so gay :')
> 
> also it's march 22 square up motherfuckers you're going down
> 
> (down, in an earlier round)))) no wtf shut up dicknoodle
> 
> Quryingtuirying: How thick is your eyeliner rn
> 
> Ainqyringswiying: I forgot to put it on this morning but stopped midway through lunch and remembered what today is (eyeliner is gr9 4 a guy tbh thank)
> 
> ~DICKNOODLE!!!!!


	5. it's okay not everyone can be punk rock

“I want to draw you,” Dallon decides, words as abrupt in the Nevada streets as I’ve ever heard them, a certain determination that not even I can degrade.

“You already did,” I remind Dallon, swinging my arms in synchronization with him. “Back at the coffee shop.”

“Those were just your hands. No one could’ve known they were yours.”

I’m urged to say that he doesn’t have to do anything for me, that his art is his and his alone and doesn’t involve me, even if I wish it would, that his masterpieces are just that, ripe as a fruit and wonderful just the same. However, Dallon is confident with his desires and will probably draw me nonetheless, and I suppose that’s not such a bad thing. He draws me like I have some sort of soul or heart, like I’m a spectacle, like I’m worthy of art form. When he draws me, he knows more about me than I do, and it’s like forgetting myself for his own version of who I am, much more beautiful than I could ever be.

“What makes me special enough to draw?”

“Everything,” Dallon assures, piercing his step with a small and optimistic bounce. “Everyone has something special about them in my opinion, and if they don’t see it at first, I bring it out through art so that they can.”

A dry laugh. “A bit pretentious, don’t you think?”

“Pretentiousness is just a style of expression.”

“An annoying one,” I scoff.

Dallon spins to approach me, crueler than what he usually does but not cruel still, his docile nature winning over the rest. “Would you rather me cleanse myself of pretentiousness or draw you with the same beauty you have but won’t admit?”

I don’t answer, fearing that more challenges are to flood in and deny me the little verity I have for yet another instance where Dallon is right but doesn’t make a scene out of it, even if he should, because that’s human, and he understands what humans are like.

The buildings split into an alleyway where an abandoned can of spray paint lies derelict on a ground damp with the excess deluge of the gutter systems circumscribing each edge of the structures, and Dallon is immediately pulled to it with a strange sort of fascination twinkling in his eyes.

“You know, it’s illegal to vandalize property, and it’s even worse if you get caught by the ruthless suburban moms. I don’t know if you had that rule in “everything is better” France, but here we are now — in “thirteen bald eagles for each original colony” America.”

“The wall has already been vandalized.” Dismissing my sly comment about our countries, Dallon points to the convoluted layer of bricks stacked against each other as if old friends and becoming older still, and he wraps the spray paint in his cupped palm for use.

I know how dangerous this is if we get caught, how dangerous this is if someone sees us and reports our activities to the police later without a warning, how dangerous this is if Dallon finds himself deported from the country by effect of the flexible American laws, but my companion is already flecking the wall with crimson streaks over and over again until he’s made a winning start at something new, and stopping is the least of his priorities.

So I stand back and marvel at what he’s doing, each second hoisting fresh connotations onto the piece and killing the air in my lungs solely out of sheer astonishment. Dallon seems to know what he’s doing, with every stroke onto the bricks calculated briefly before it’s cut through the dense material of the wall, and he’s searching for something to grasp in it.

Dallon starts with what he’s given: a hastened mark in the lower terrain of the wall, jutting out like a bruise on vampiric skin. However, what was previously scanty is now smoldering in artistry and every breath of a miracle through the nozzle of a spray paint bottle, and the masterpiece has claimed beauty for its own, all guided by the astuteness of Dallon’s gentle hands.

Just imagine what he could do for the world — giving away his work for Christmas presents and everything festive, volunteering to paint the rooms of children in the hospital, sparking melancholy out of nothing and making people like the way the sadness feels in their bones, like lead and rope squeezing at each other, everything that anyone could ask for delivered to them in a wordless expression of what’s going on.

I could know Dallon Weekes. I could know him inside out, could know him blind, could know him as a whisper with only his art to guide me to a conclusion, and I could know what struggles he’s endured and what joy he’s witnessed within the secretive folds of his scarves. I could know it all.

And maybe I could help him through what he’s dealing with, because I’d comprehend that perhaps his hardships are not so different from mine, lurking in the depths of things in which he thinks he’s alone but are actually as common as the flu. Everyone knows that artists are never happy. Everyone knows that if they don’t die young in body, they die young in spirit, and nothing can save them.

But if I knew everything about Dallon, I could know if he’s on his way to the grave, where the rest of his kind lie, and though he may wish to fit in with his crowd, this isn’t the way to go. I should hope that he at least considers me before the pitfalls of his artistic nature swallow him whole.

Dallon is jubilant, as far as I can tell, and he’s persevering with that bottle of spray paint in his hand as it swipes across the wall in one color that can do more than I could with _all_ of the colors, and even what he’s painting signals that he’s all right for now.

The cheeky “for now” is, I presume, a troubling loophole, but the apple that Dallon’s painting washes it all away, having mesmerized me completely. What kind of dying person crafts an apple out of the last embers of a spray paint can? What kind of dying person is grinning wildly throughout the manufacturing process of his art? What kind of dying person is poking me to join him to either admire his piece or assist him in shaping it?

None that I’ve seen, and I’ve encountered death before. Dallon is not a part of it. He will be buoyant for as long as I’m around, and I will make sure of that.

“Brendon.” Dallon tugs me towards him fervidly, a beam scaling his complexion in scarlet. “Do you like it?” He watches me optimistically, gaze fixed only on me as mine is fixed on the wall in complete and utter adulation.

“How could I not?” I gasp, fumbling for Dallon’s arm to feel like I can hold onto something while the rest of the world is slipping away, the rest of what I thought I knew. “How did you do this with only one color?”

My companion grins. “I just left some space blank for a replication of light on the fruit and utilized a bit of the water for my advantage.” He says it so matter of factly, like it’s an obvious concept, yet it’s not bitter and condescending, rather proud that he could teach me something about art.

I love it that he whirls this way, that he can inform me of things without belittling me and making me think that I don’t deserve to understand amazing creations such as his, and perhaps that’s viable, but Dallon never hints at anything of the sort. I guess he figures that anyone can learn art, that anyone can bask in the dim sunlight that’s been stained black with the depression that’s laced into creativity, but Dallon never offers that depression. He’s offering the highlights of art, the beauty, the pulchritude, not once the anger and devastation.

I’ve had enough of that.

“You should go to art school,” I suggest, still awestruck by what Dallon has painted.

“It’s too expensive, and I don’t want to chain myself to a life like that. Art is more of a hobby, really. I want to be a psychologist instead.”

My brow yawns in surprise. “A psychologist?”

“Isn’t it exciting?” Dallon curls into himself, elated by the mere thought of this science. “The brain is a complex organ, and I find it interesting to study it.”

A shrug lilts into my shoulders, a bit skeptical. “I mean, I guess it is, but I can’t imagine being tethered to working through people’s problems all day.”

“I’d like to try it out, just for a week or two.” Dallon claps me over the shoulder and leads me away from the alley, back into the light of the street and away from the anxiety of wondering if we would be spotted.

We weren’t caught by the hatred of vandalism, though, and now there’s a masterpiece stitched into the wall to prove it, but I’ll admit the real masterpiece is the fact that Dallon is doing just fine. But there’s still that cheeky “for now”.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Dal Pal is my smol chil''d' :)))))
> 
> Queinie: do you like breb or dal more in this fic?
> 
> Answeeinie: DALLON jaMES WEEKES


	6. happy birthday 2 the rat queen

“It’s time to plan, you dimwitted fools.” Kara drags a binder from underneath the table and slams it onto the polished wood surface, a game face bleaching her skin.

She’s always been very diplomatic, interested in politics and business class at school when no one else was, when everyone was drifting into sleep and doodling on their worksheets, and her hard work has paid off, except she’s become more annoying than she was before and constantly demands that I do things for her, even when she’s capable of doing it herself.

And now she’s commanding me to help her plan something, a something about whom I know nothing, but she won’t relent until she’s gotten her way, so I’d rather not be bombarded by flying limbs tossed around the couch when I’m trying to help Dallon study for a history test specifically about _American_ history and all its faults, and if I decline I know that Dallon will beg me otherwise, so there’s no use in fighting.

“Plan what?”

A look of annoyance weeps from her scowling lips, ordering her to kick me below the table. “My birthday. I’m turning thirteen, in case you haven’t noticed.” Opening the binder and refusing to acknowledge me, she mutters, “What kind of brother are you? Honestly.”

Laughing, I lean back in my chair. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Well, anyway, what would you like to do for it? To, um, _celebrate_?” Dallon continues in doubt, throat hitching on the rough _r_ sound for precisely two seconds.

Counting again. I was told I need to stop, sometimes by Ryan and sometimes my Kara, who’s freaked out by my neuroticism, and I can’t really blame her. It’s not normal to count every heartbeat, every second, every stroke of a pen, but I’ve blocked it out. It’s always there, though. Always.

I don’t want a psychologist for it, though. Yeah, I realize they can be amazing people, and I’ve heard of great results from them, but they’re just not my thing. The counting isn’t an issue, either, not that I can see. It’s just a habit, and I don’t want to be chained to a profession like this just because of a lowly habit, and if I ever decide to seek help, Dallon is a psychologist enough.

Kara flips directly to a page, an outline of sorts, excited that Dallon asked. “Well I’m not planning on anything big, just a couple friends maybe.”

I had expected my friend to be inundated by the flow of words out of Kara’s mouth, but he’s instead listening attentively and clinging onto every syllable. Perhaps it’s just because English is his second language and he’s just attempting to follow her rapid spiel, or it’s because I identify him as a kind soul who actually cares about other people’s problems, unlike me, but that may get him into trouble along the road.

Right now, however, it’s nice to see him so engaged, because he _does_ care. He really does care about Kara, about me, about America through his insults towards it, and he’ll be there for all of us. He’s doing it right now.

“Is there anything you’d like to do with them?” Dallon inquires, bent towards the table as he listens closely.

Kara shrugs. “I’d just like a casual thing more than an extravaganza.”

“Like a...what’s it called?” Dallon taps the napkin near him seven times — _stop_ — before Kara swoops in and helps him out with a furled brow.

“A sleepover?”

“Yeah, a sleepover,” Dallon agrees, nodding his head jubilantly, but Kara declines the offer of that party style, deciding it’s too much work for me to prepare, and part of me wants to thank her for being so considerate and then schedule a sleepover anyway, as it’s the birthday that will fling her into the teenage years, but the other part concurs that I can’t do this with only me and Dallon to help.

“We could just have a small get together with a couple of friends and roam free, like the acne on my flesh I’ll soon be receiving.”

I choke on the air surrounding me, surprised that my little sister is so aware of what horrors are to come, and though our family has never had a problem with acne, she’s determined to be the first, or so it seems by her depiction of the teenage era. My astonishment ripples on Dallon’s face with an amused smirk that he won’t annihilate immediately after it manifests, and I kick him under the table, which is supplied by more giggles.

“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea,” I croak out breathlessly, with residual waves of shock undulating upon me.

A sly smile still clotting at the edge of Dallon’s lips, he focuses on Kara instead of my acute anxiety at my sister being more self-aware than I ever was. “How should we help you set this up?”

“You’re like a mom, Brendon,” Kara concludes, earning a quizzical expression from me. “Both in spirit and position over me, unless you count Kyla, but she’s in New York, so whatever.”

The rate at which Kara is moving is somehow more startling to me than to Dallon, which makes no sense to me, because it’s like my sister is barely breathing, and as her older brother that should concern me, and it does, though it doesn’t concern Dallon, but Dallon is my friend and should pity me for my troubles and grieve with me, but all he does is stare as Kara gushes about her party plans. Maybe he’s actually more unsteady than I am and is merely inert in his chair.

“Anyway, you could call the other moms of your suburban kind and ask if their children would enjoy venturing to the home of the rat ass and the temporary home of his rat ass French friend.”

“You phrase things so eloquently,” Dallon remarks, a swift laugh unspooling from his lungs once he regains his composure.

“I think I might write poetry in the future.”

“A fellow creator, I see.”

“Unlike Brendon here” — Kara jabs a thumb in my direction — “who only likes English and history. Concrete.” The last word is caked in drought, as if bitter for an elementary preference, though I know not why. I just came out here to have a good time, and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.

“I’m the one who’s planning your birthday party,” I retort in the only defense I can build.

Kara’s countenance transfers from fortified to faithful, proposing a birthday desire to me. “Is Kyla visiting for the party?”

My bones sag at her facile wish, a facile wish that I cannot achieve, no matter how much I want to, and it’s my duty to cushion the blow for her at least. “I’m sorry, but you know how things are. She’s busy with work.”

Though Kara knew what was coming her way, she’s still as dejected as she would’ve been if this were the first time hearing it, but the truth is the truth. The truth is the painful reality that we never win what we dream of, that we’re irrevocably helpless, and that’s why Kara being so self-aware is all the more terrifying. “Yeah, I get it.” Her head hangs through the dense air, struggling to drop the situation that’s plagued her since Kyla departed for college and never returned, her only memory being the salary she submits to us so that we can just fucking survive.

And it’s not like I can condemn her for that, because I know she’s trying, and I can’t ask her to try harder, because she already is. I have so much respect for my older sister, for both her conflicts and her success, for everything that she does for us that still won’t be suitable for Kara.

I’m ambivalently endeavoring to aid Kara with her life and her school work and her teenage obsessions the best I can, simultaneously promising that Kyla will is doing just fine and will be back soon, but Kara doesn’t know about the three A.M. phone calls heavy with tears and the stench of stress all the way from New York City. Kara doesn’t know about the cracking noise of a businesswoman caving from the pressure. Kara doesn’t know about her sister so ready to give up on us and leave us on our own. But then again, how could either of us _truly_ know what Kyla’s going through?

We can’t, though Kara is evermore requesting fiercely to understand, but all I can do is plan her measly birthday party.

“Hey,” Dallon coos, locking his fingers into Kara’s to console her in place of me. “We can have plenty of fun without Kyla.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Dallon eyes me ferociously, somewhat unsure that I’ll close my mouth and keep Kara content that way yet having no evidence to suggest that I would, but he’s French, so who knows? Damn French. You just never comprehend what they’re doing. What nubs.

“Do you like go-karting?” I muse, fragments of a smile curling at my lips.

Kara pushes me away, eyes bulging as her legs fidget in her seat. “No way, trash ass. We’ll find another place to fight.”

“Okay, we’ll think on it.”

“Not that you do much of that anyway,” Kara mutters, and we’re back to that sibling rivalry we’ve always shared.

Perfect for a birthday gift.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: KARA IS THE FUCKING QUEEN OKAY
> 
> Quepchun: HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE KARA
> 
> Auipswun: LIKE 1000 PERCENT LIKE A++ AIGHT OMG SHE'S BOSS AF
> 
> ~Dakara ;)))


	7. gotta two-step outta here

“Hey, Brendon, can you get my binder from my backpack?” Dallon inquires, gently nudging me from my partial sleep. “That’s _sac à dos_ in French, by the way.”

Slingshotting a curt laugh from my lungs once the grogginess escapes, I rise against the gravity of the couch to retrieve Dallon’s binder, quipping, “I don’t need French lessons.”

“Well I don’t need English lessons.”

“Fair enough.”

Upon reaching Dallon’s backpack, the zipper shreds away from its loyal counterpart to reveal the contents of the bag, or _sac à dos_ , as Dallon taught me only moments prior. However, what snags my attention is not his binder, rather a pill bottle reclining atop his books, a pill bottle that contrasts with Dallon’s generally joyous personality.

I thought he was going to be a happy artist. I thought he was going to be the first. If so, why are these in here? He’s supposed to be doing fine. What does any of this mean?

“Dallon, what is this?”

Dallon materializes from behind the door to the living room with a pleasant simper still rouging his cheeks, but once he spots the accusatory pill bottle clenched in my hand, his posture immediately crumples like his scarf. His glow is furnished with panic, his aura flickering on and off like a wearied light bulb. “You’re not supposed to have that.”

I hold the bottle farther away from him, though he’s making no advance to obtain it again.“Why not? Is it a secret you don’t want to tell the people who care about you?”

Dallon’s jaw scrabbles at the surrounding bones, knit boldly by annoyance. “No, because I knew you would freak out over it, and you are.”

“Of course I would freak out!” I exclaim, jostling the contents of the medicine container as it follows my arms into the air. “I’m your fucking friend!”

Conflicted by my sudden anger, Dallon’s tone slopes into begging, into a lukewarm drink. “Brendon, would you sit down with me on the couch? I would like to explain my case.”

Reluctantly, I chase Dallon to the sofa with only the compliment of metal by my side as it drags me down, but that hindrance is discarded once I sink into the cushions.

Dallon toys with his fingers, twisting them around each other in positions unnatural to anyone else, and it requires my doe-eyed approval for him to begin. “The placebo effect is something that has haunted me for years, always cackling in the eaves of my heart. At first, it was just acknowledging the sensation that was the difficult thing. I hated it, turned away from any possibility of change, because as far as I knew, my life was messed up, and irreversibly so.

“In other words, the placebo effect was the phenomenon that woke me from sleep in a cold sweat and ordered me to write something down or else forget what I came to this earth to accomplish. It provided me a sense of authority that could never be revoked by anyone except myself, and I was hungry for that, you know?” Tears scribble over Dallon’s bluebird eyes with a messy blade of chalk that everyone can see but only means enough to him for credit, and he swirls his hand into mine, compressing it, clearing his throat, struggling to continue.

“I thought that you could take pills without consequences, without allergic reactions and anaphylactic shock, and I was correct on that terrain. I could withdraw at any time, and it may not have been completely healthy, but it was a better solution than lorazepam or something equally as unstable. I could supplement my life with purpose, with a reason to rise from bed in the morning, with a dose that protected me from an abnormal mindset.” Dallon nods to himself, as if still unsure that he made the right conclusion and nevertheless attempting to assure himself that he did.

“So I decided that fake medicine was the way to go, and I’ve always been interested in psychology, as you’ve no doubt already observed, and what better way to express that than an experiment involving the very thing that hollowed my heart for intrigue? Don’t you think that it’s harmless?”

I want to tell him no, want to scream it from the rooftops so that the whole world can understand that what he’s doing to himself is reckless and stupid and so unlike the Dallon Weekes I know, the Dallon Weekes I would hate to lose.

But I don’t say a thing, reminding myself that nothing I offer will ever matter to him, because he’s just so fucking decisive about killing himself, and the pleading of those around him is just another trigger to push him along, to finally break him.

This is the mind of an artist, and not a single artist is happy.

“The nocebo effect is the opposite reaction, however, and it entails ghastly results, but that’s not what’s afflicting me, and I’m fine. I promise I’m fine, and that should be viable, because I don’t lie half as much as you do. You can trust me on that.”

And I look him straight in those blue jay eyes of his and tell him he’s wrong. “No, I’m not sure that I can.”

“Brendon.” Dallon’s voice is severed at both the _r_ and the usually lovely connotations of my name, emotion disabling the coherence I once attributed to him for the bittersweet fruit of complete and utter turmoil.

“Don’t think that you do not matter to me. Don’t think that I would ever give up on you. Don’t think that you deserve to die. Don’t you fucking dare.” I swipe away three fallen locks of hair towards Dallon’s ear, and he shies away. “But don’t think you can injure yourself like this. There’s still a chance of you falling into a harmful cycle, into the nocebo effect.”

“Why would I do that to you? Why would _anyone_ do that to someone they love?” Dallon’s mouth is partially agape, welcoming a centimeter of air into him as he waits for a response to his existential question, to his existential question that I could never answer.

But he’s still waiting for it, ‘cause he’s so fucking clueless as to how I could blame him for downing the pills that _he_ selected on his own, and I’ll have to say that I’m unable to answer that question, because not even I know what my best friend is going through, and maybe I should, and maybe I shouldn’t, but I nevertheless don’t, and I’m paying for it now.

“Do you think I’d love someone while simultaneously torturing them like this?” Dallon’s brows remain scrunched as he scours my face for some sort of solution, because none of this is making sense to him.

“The only torturous thing about this is loving you in return and having to agonizingly watch you suffocate.”

“Then suffocate with me.” And before I know what’s happening, Dallon’s lips splinter against mine, rosewood against cherry, artist against scholar, the world against us.

He tastes like winter, smells like peppermint and the good old days. He is the monochrome palette of his clothing, the only color on him the blues of his scarves. He is everything beautiful in this world, everything pure, everything worth living for, everything that he is extending to me so that I may acquire it, so I do. I tug on the strings surrounding him, like fibers of hair stroking the area behind his ears where they coil, and his shirt is suddenly ragged within my fingers as my body is in his.

Each breath is a scalding feather on my skin, scarlet petals cascading down to a blanket of snow and sinking wholly inside of it with a fluid rhythm of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until we thirst for more — more of each other, more of art, more of _life_.

Because we are magnificent, and we are art. We are the hues of paint gliding over each other as they fade into the sunset. We are each individual scratch on paper with the grey tones of graphite. We are an artist’s frustration, depression, unfiltered rage at the world. We are each other’s masterpieces.

I am prepared to love what I can about Dallon. I am prepared for late night conversations over a bottle of champagne and not worrying that drinking it is illegal. I am prepared for when those placebo pills aren’t so placebo anymore. I am prepared for the tears that streak from relationships. I am prepared for the heartbreak, the anguish, the stages of loving someone so captivating, someone so destructive. I am prepared for anything that flies my way, and I am prepared to fight for Dallon Weekes.

So we climb through one another’s emotions, switching between smiles and tears upon chipper mouths and batting lashes, and every word is treasured like it’ll be our last.

“ _Je n’aime que toi_ ” is Dallon’s whisper. I love only you.

And that’s all I care about. Not the fruitless aching of this town. Not the “rat ass” and “banging the rat ass” sticky notes on our foreheads in the morning. Not any of it.

Only Dallon Weekes and his knack for making me fall in love with him. Only Dallon Weekes and his faith in me. Only Dallon Weekes — forever and ever.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: right, so like
> 
> I'm just apologising for this straight up savage bullshit I'm doing lmao
> 
> I feel like this was forced but this is only going to be around 50k words just so I can say I've written three novels and I guess there's not much space for relationships anyway (I'm just a lazy fuck, sorry)
> 
> ChinChin: Do you think this relationship was forced?
> 
> InChin: idk probably but some of you have been shipping it so
> 
> ~DaCRAPPY-WRITER


	8. Kara ft. the Lesbians

Flour, water, eggs, all the ingredients, everything ambling into the mixing bowl to produce a fabulous birthday cake for a fabulous sister of mine who’s equipping herself for a party at this moment and has somehow managed to steal Dallon to assist her.

So I’m tasked with cooking this godforsaken cake of hers that _must_ have blue icing and _must_ have the lenny face on it and _must_ have vanilla “intestines”, as she described them, and so far I’m maintaining a steady approach to it, but with each minute ticking away with only forty-seven to spare, maybe that goal isn’t so attainable. Maybe the lenny face will have to burn, along with my hope for Kara’s meme abilities.

How many pubescent teenagers will I have to feed with this cake? How many of them will like it? How many of them will hate it and decide to throw it at each other like a scene from any high school drama? How many of them will chase me around the house with a chunk of the dessert in their fists? How many people will die at this party?

This oscillation is exhibited in my frantic mixing of the cake ingredients inside the bowl, and finally, after three minutes and twenty-four seconds of chaos, including one hundred and sixty-eight stirs around the container, the cake is ready to be malevolently crisped in the oven, and I am ready to be relieved of my baking duties.

Reposing on the stability that the kitchen counter offers, I usher a sigh from my mouth, psyching myself up to deal with Kara’s friends. I won’t be able to handle this.

♫♫♫♫

The stairs groan as they’re stepped upon, and down come Dallon and Kara, the birthday girl and her escort. She’s donning a flaxen sundress with a belt bound around her waist to paint a figure into her posture. Centurian sandals of the same color bite her ankles in strands of leather spinning around and around, and through it all, she looks absolutely gorgeous.

“Aren’t you just lovely?” I marvel, halting my motion in awe of my sister’s beautiful birthday dress that I still can’t tear my vision away from.

It’s nothing extravagant, devoid of massive hoops and ruffled fabric, but it casts a chandelier upon her entire body that not even I can ignore. The yellow of the dress, the sunflower petals upon her pale skin, deftly accentuates the brown seeds in her eyes, and she is truly a flower blooming in early spring.

This image is so different from the Kara I know, the Kara who shoots foam bullets at me from ironically purchased toy guns, the Kara who uses “rat ass” as an infinite phrase, the Kara who doesn’t shower for three days and doesn’t give a shit about boys’ reactions because apparently she likes flannels and Home Depot and therefore is a lesbian.

I’m not claiming that the look doesn’t suit her, as it does rather well, but the perplexing concept of this enormous disparity kindles astonishment to my array of emotions, and I’ll just have to acclimate to it before her party starts and I’m left to be portrayed as a stuttering fool.

On the other side of things, Dallon is dressed quite plainly, melanoid waves over his jacketed arms and torso, the flowing river of his scarf winding around his neck, black corsets on his legs that we call skinny jeans, hipster frames spilling over his nose, a beanie propped over his wren-feathered hair, the natural radiance of a smile perched on his lips. Even with his attire, I dare say he’s more stunning than my sister, though I’m staring dumbstruck at them both.

“Take a picture — it’ll last longer,” Kara snaps, hastening her gait once the door chimes to signal someone’s arrival.

Dallon is startled, and his heart races all around his chest on his way towards me to hide the finished cake from the guests until it’s time to whip it out for dessert.

Promptly after Dallon has completed his task of stowing away the cake, the door is guillotined from its hinges, and the shrieking noises of Kara greeting her guest are audible even in the kitchen. “Hillary, welcome, you little nub! It’s time for some dank shit to go down.”

“Of course.” Hillary follows Kara into the kitchen, then stopping once she realizes that she’s dressed very similarly to Dallon. “One of us is going to have to change.”

Dallon expels a hushed giggle, swinging awkwardly on his feet with his arms crossing behind his back as he waits six seconds for the joke to subside into a more interesting topic for thirteen year-old girls, such as world domination and chicken tenders.

More of Kara’s friends report to the house one by one until there are three guests in total (excluding the birthday girl), all strapped into the same style of clothing that hails combat boots and leather as their supreme rulers, and Dallon notes entire their presence as a time to welcome everyone into the home.

I’m sure that everyone’s aware of what’s about to go down. If you mess with the meme queens, you “get rekt”, so Dallon’s being lenient about his rules, applying only one to govern fairly yet understanding that it’ll come close to being broken anyway.

“Just try not to blow anything up please.”

“He’s French?” One girl — I think her name is Breezy — exclaims, directing her question to Kara rather than the subject of conversation. “I didn’t know you had exotic friends!”

Dallon only chuckles, lashes met with laughing lines around them in the latent cognizance that his nationality will be the first proclaimed detail about him, but I’m moderately unnerved by Breezy’s comment, probably because France isn’t _that_ exotic. Chances are, she studies French at school and has gone there for an opulent vacation with her family at least once.

“Yes, I’m from Bordeaux. That’s in the west of France.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Breezy nods, focus adhering to her shoe as the opposite foot labors to step on the stray lace. “My dad only likes America, because he’s an extremely conservative bitch who concluded it would be a sound idea to build a house in the woods for us.”

“Well your dad isn’t here, so you can praise any country you wish.”

“Aces.” Breezy rocks into another girl (whose name I remember to be Megan), a childish grin sweetening her face. “You hear that? We can visit hell again.”

Megan, much like her brother Patrick, is characterized by her academic prowess, and until Kara indoctrinated her with the life of memes, she was that kid in the back of the birthday party, the kid who was only invited because of pity or because the whole grade was attending and she therefore had to be included in that mix. But now look at her — now she’s on top of meme culture, has equally as weird friends, and still scores well in school. She’s doing much better, and though I don’t know her all that much, I’m proud.

“Would any of you like cake?” I interject before things get too satanic.

Hillary glances up from sending a text on her phone, shoving it in her pocket and advancing towards the table. “I prefer the tears of men, but that’s cool, too.”

Neglecting her comment while understanding that she could probably kick my ass and spring tears from me, I grope in the kitchen drawer for the lighter, which Dallon finds for me upon seeing my struggle.

“It’s lit,” Kara mutters under her breath once the candles bounce to life in every hue of orange imaginable.

“Go fuck a nut,” Breezy retorts, also under her breath so that Dallon won’t ask what that means and end up embarrassing himself thinking it’s a common English phrase.

“I’m a lesbian, you fucking cunt.”

“Happy birthday!” I interrupt in song to avoid an escalation of this conversation that’s becoming louder and louder, and Dallon joins me after catching what it is I’m so afraid of happening.

Reluctantly, the kids sing with us and try to discard the devilish smirk seasoning Kara’s eyes with the reflection of fire as an added bonus, and my sister then extinguishes the candles with one stubborn puff of air.

“I know you were all wondering what I wished for, and I’d like to tell you that I desire to go to France one day.”

Dallon is instantaneously intrigued by the conversation, and his voice mitigates to a warm honey. “I could take you sometime.”

“I’d like that,” Kara accepts, tone just as sappy as his.

Noticing the pungent stench of heterosexuality, though this is merely friendship, Breezy slams her hands on the table and announces, “Okay, it’s time for presents!”

I transport the various bags and boxes to Kara’s spot for her to unwrap and potentially die in the process — there might be something dangerous in one of those containers — and she proceeds with mine first: a gift card to Hot Topic, which she graciously thanks me for, solaced that I didn’t buy her My Little Pony merchandise.

Next is Dallon’s: a set of colored pencils to accurately shade in Kara’s drawings, and for this one, she rises to hug him, professing that she’s always wanted those but really just yearning for his embrace. There’s something comforting about Dallon, I must admit.

Pretty amazing gifts, if you ask me, but unfortunately Kara’s friends’ presents do not follow the same route. Breezy elected to give Kara three quarts of milk and a Skeleton War t-shirt, to which my sister draws out a reply of, “What the actual fuck?”

Breezy winks. “You need strong bones for October, you know, to fight the heterosexuals. You’re welcome, sugar plum.”

Hillary proposes her gift, though unsure if she’ll be able to surpass the standard Breezy’s present has set. However, it’s a tie, ‘cause birthdays don’t really get much better than Hello Kitty jockstraps.

Kara pounds the table, ascending from her chair in frustration. “Guess what? Screw you. Screw your family. Screw your dog. Screw your limited edition Big Bang Theory DVD. See you in hell, you fucking scene kid.”

“Wait!” Megan calls through unbridled laughter. “You haven’t opened my present yet.”

With four seconds of hesitation, Kara eventually returns to the table and nervously seizes the box enshrined in poorly drawn Pepe the Frog wrapping paper. “This is already shit, Megan.”

Megan says nothing, instead observing as Kara shreds the casing of the gift to discover ten terrifying anime masks.

“Weeaboo rat. I knew you would do this,” Kara curses, lifting the masks up to the light as if forcing them to explain why they exist.

“We can be weeaboo rats together, though.” Megan’s irises burn with a plan. “Let’s patrol the neighborhood, yeah?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: KARA'S FRIENDS ARE THE SHIT OMG
> 
> there were so many meme references in this chapter why do I do this
> 
> Quangchang: what's your favourite meme?
> 
> Aingswing: idk man there are so many
> 
> ~Dankota


	9. while the city sleeps, we rule the streets

“Everyone has a mask, right?” Megan clarifies, left with four excess masks of varying skin tones, eye colors, and hair colors, like terrifying people requires drastic diversity. It’s thoughtful, I guess, but I’m pretty sure Hillary is the only biracial one, though she looks more white than black. She grabs the tanner one, however.

“We should be ready to go,” Kara confirms with a nod, glancing around at both the garage and the street ahead. “Let’s roll.”

Dallon looks at me, primarily confused by this American phrase, but I only shrug it off bluntly and remind him that he won’t be able to know everything about this wild land and that Kara’s phrase isn’t that important, usually utilized by dads and suburban aunts and the occasional guy in a movie who’s trying to seem cool.

We promenade on the streets of the neighborhood both Kara and I grew up in but haven’t seen other than to go somewhere, so as far as the neighbors know we’ve turned into anime dolls that operate autonomously, but they’re probably not afraid of us, recognizing that we’ve always been a tad weird. This is as regular as Sunday night football.

“What the hell is that?” someone shrieks, emerging from their garage for some wholesome gardening and instead finding our clan of Japanese mistakes.

Okay, maybe I was wrong about this excursion being regular, but who am I to understand my neighbors? I haven’t talked to any of them in seven years, and nor has Kara, but even if they can’t familiarize themselves with us all that well due to a lack of communication, I thought they would be nonplussed about this whole charade — they’re not, to say the least.

“No worries, sir!” Hillary calls out without the anime mask’s lips moving and scaring anyone who can see her, and she waves to him to ineffectively tranquilize his concerns.

“Is this a new fad with the youngsters?”

Hillary volunteers her lip to mutilation by her teeth, siphoning a shrug into her shoulders. “Um, I guess you could say that.”

Relieved, he man grins, waving to us and reaching for a plow. “Okay, well you kids have fun with your youngster fads!”

“More like youngster fags,” Kara whispers to herself, and an eavesdropping Breezy smacks her, warning, “I’m not taking you to the Adidas store.”

“Fuck you and all of your milk cartons.”

Breezy performs that countenance of someone who’s drinking tea after throwing some serious shade, and she counters, “Ryan Ross will be doing that to the milk soon.”

“How do you know Ryan?” I interrupt, not caring if Kara will accuse me of listening when I shouldn’t be. “He’s in high school and rarely sees you.”

“I am the all seeing eye—”

“Anime was a mistake!” a teenager, who I later discover is coincidentally of Asian heritage, screams from his window upon spotting our posse dancing through the street, then shutting it before we can properly respond to his quite truthful comment.

“Stay woke,” Megan remarks, saluting the teenager that can no longer see us, whether that’s because he sealed his window or just because he’d prefer to stay the hell away from anything anime related.

Hillary’s eyes whirl in her skull. “You make no sense.”

Before Megan can retaliate with a fully blown explanation of how she does, in fact, make perfect sense, most likely narrating how she makes sense only to herself, a car speeds towards the stop sign, lurching to a halt out of either recollection of traffic rules or surprise at our absurd costumes, perhaps both. That would be reasonable.

The driver wheels down her window, a typical suburban mom expression souring her makeup-dense face as her mouth separates from its moist, bright crimson shackles while she speaks. “You know, delinquents such as yourself shouldn’t be in a fine neighborhood like this.”

“Tragic,” Kara quips. “I know you have a potluck to attend, so why don’t you hurry along to that?”

Frustrated by the abundance of millennials in the world and pretending that she wasn’t a teenager once, the woman darts away in her minivan, yelling a threat out the window. “I’m calling the HOA on you kids!”

Dallon scours me for the definition for the HOA, which I kindly give, and he laughs once piecing together the meaning and the recent events. “Like _l’association des propriétaires_ ,” he translates, though I have no use for this, but I thank him nevertheless for enriching me with some of his culture, fascinating as it is.

Flushed by the lack of insulation in the mask, Dallon removes the anime creature glued to his facade, a smart move on his part, but it’s against the game’s motives still.

“You can’t take your mask off!” I protest, giggling nonetheless. “Or else the people will know who you are!”

Dallon simply smiles cheerfully. “Then they’ll know I have such a wonderful friend.” I don’t understand where Dallon’s going with this, but as he steps towards me, it’s crystal clear.

He slides past my mask to wipe away the material covering my lips so that he may kiss me without obstructions, and that honeyed feeling I experienced yesterday is back to wrap me up in a blanket and rock me to sleep.

Dallon is just as soft as he was twenty-one hours ago, just as warm, but his embrace is medicated by the wind flapping around us as if aiding a sail on its journey through the ocean, an ocean as blue as my friend’s scarves, an ocean as wavy as his promises to me, an ocean that still captivates me no matter what, no matter the consequences, because it’s alluring and beautiful and everything I seek in a masterpiece, and I’ve found it in Dallon James Weekes.

I don’t really care that we’re kissing in the middle of the street, in the neighborhood that watched me grow up and probably doesn’t know I’m such a flamboyant homosexual, even though around Christmas time I continually drew “the hat” of Santa Claus in an odd sort of way (let’s just say it was really big and red), but maybe one of my neighbors writes gay fanfiction for a hobby and will find inspiration in this after seeing their first real live gay person wandering the streets with anime masked escorts. Who knows? The world is a strange place.

Yet I can’t be bothered with my neighbors when the greatest thing about all of this is that I’m kissing Dallon and I’m not scared about it. I normally would be incredibly flustered after being dipped and kissed right in the center of my neighborhood, but there’s something calming about Dallon’s personality, emanating the comforting effects of art itself.

Each delicate pressure point of Dallon’s fingers fluttering on my back is like a stone jumping in and out of water after being tossed by a gentle force, kissing whitecaps into each and every reflection coursing through the navy surface.

I quite like this sensation, how it’s just as magical as our first kiss, how the peppermint of Dallon’s clothing meanders through my senses, how each second we’re together cries to be prolonged, how we’re cognizant that this embrace will be untied eventually so we cherish it while we can.

Kara’s friends all clap for me and Dallon, and whether that’s because they’re being ironic or they’re being genuine is beyond me, but it’s nice anyway. My friend’s clutch is too tempting to be worried with what four thirteen year-old girls think of me, considering all they talk about is memes and dairy products and shame me for not comprehending why those topics are so interesting to them. Kara tells me it’s satire, but they seem authentically invested in their subjects, so I’m not certain which account I should believe. I’ll just stay away from those realms.

My lashes fan Dallon’s skin as we hold each other close, preserved in a moment of steady breathing and blackened lids knelt towards serenity, arms strong and stable and tucked around my waist in the belief that I’ll crumble without them, and I might, for Dallon Weekes is my anchor, my best friend, my masterpiece from someone who only knows enough art to create such a beauty.

And beautiful he is.

“Oh my god!” Megan squeals, mask still intact while unearthing the notion that she’s more in touch with the emotional side of her personality than the rest of her friends. “You two are so cute together!”

Fire wicks my cheeks, albeit I should’ve seen this coming. If Megan can start a meme, she can start a ship, and even if she shouldn’t be commenting on my affairs with other people, I’m glad she’s not a scrap of homophobic scum like most people at my school are.

“ _Je n’aime que toi_ ,” Dallon murmurs to me, near enough that the hairs near my ear tremble in the breeze of his assurance.

I turn to him once more, a hand on his chest and a throne in his heart, reciprocating the idolatry. “ _Toujours, mon chéri_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: throwback to that time I made fanart for my own stories as if I'm a fan cause honestly I think these things are fucking shit lmao I refuse to read them
> 
> Queenie: why the fuck are you still reading these they're terrible
> 
> Answeenie: I don't even read these chapters to edit them so that's why there may be weird cursing things like "leave me the heck alone" because I write these on my school computer where they can see you like Jon Walker sees all
> 
> ~Dacareful


	10. sensual ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Dallon muses, a sigh lagging on its route from his lungs. “How paint can stand alone as a color and then be infused with another to form a whole new shade?”

Everything is beautiful when it’s glimpsed from the eyes of Dallon Weekes, but I unfortunately do not possess that gift to transmute something generally perceived as ugly into something magnificent. I suppose that’s the magic he worked in loving me, though I still cannot judge objects as he can.

“It’s just simple science, but yeah, I guess.”

Dallon contemplates this for the duration of him organizing the wells of blue and red paint over a white tarp strewn across my bed so my mother won’t rise from the dead and scold me for ruining my sheets, and when everything is done and prepared, he inquires, “Would you like to test out that ‘simple science’ with me?”

“Everyone knows what happens, though, so there’s not much point in trying it—”

 _Splat_. No he didn’t. Did Dallon Weekes seriously just assail me with that nasty red paint? Did he just? Did he? _Did. He._

My brow upwardly strains all of the confusions to make it perfectly visible that this means war, and I’m not going down without a fight. “Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming.”

“Oh, really?” A smirk dissolves in and out of the edges of Dallon’s lips, slicing them to secrecy and deception.

We both grapple for a paintbrush to be the first one to strike after Dallon’s quite tricky opening move, and I am glorious on this front, utilizing my advantage to fire some red paint at him, bowing right in the middle of his nose and startling him, but while I was executing my move I offered enough time for him to shoot a cobalt missile back at me.

“You’re fucked, _monsieur_.” Though not in the way Dallon would expect, considering I’m randomly on top of him all of the sudden, lips on lips with chemicals overtop, performing the same simple science we discussed only seconds prior as my red and his blue breed into a blossoming mulberry upon our cheeks.

Shades of violet spray everywhere — onto the tarp, onto our clothes, sometimes breaching their confines and inching up the walls, and I can practically hear my mother reprimanding me already. It’s not like either of us really give a care, because we’re tanning in the fun we were never able to fully experience before, and we’re living our first moments together, in each other’s arms, in each other’s distinctive scents of peppermint and orchids, in each other’s reds and blues and purples and every combination strung throughout who will soon burst against the dim sky and be honored as fireworks celebrating the fact that we survived our journeys leading up to now and may rest in one another’s cradle for as long as we need support.

We’re a hot mess in purple, but we’re a hot mess together.

~~~~~

My hair smoothed back and ruffled. The butterfly wings of a kiss upon my lips. That candid honey sensation. “ _Bonjour, mon petit choux_ ” is a familiar voice’s morning greeting, sweet as silk and just as precious.

“ _Bonjour_.” My brows skip up and down my forehead teasingly, snagging on the crusted paint from our late night activities, and Dallon kisses me once again on my clean nose with a barely audible giggle.

One of my larger t-shirts kicks loosely against his torso, and I swivel around to discover that his old clothes, irreversibly plagued by paint unless we wash them, lie unkempt on the floor near a damp towel that he must’ve used for a brief shower before waking me. That would explain why he smells so good, so much like the peppermint that swarmed me during the Christmas times when my parents were still here and not smashed by a car, but I need not get into that.

Dallon is that blessing who’s allowed me to forget about that event, that _thing_ that shook my life and turned me upside down, that occasion that made sure Kyla could never come back home and left Kara without a proper older sister, that day where I screamed as loud as I could but my ears never ached because it was all in my head. Of course I couldn’t let my siblings know what was happening to me. Of course I couldn’t. It was better that way, and now Dallon is helping me realize that it’s better _his_ way and that there’s a foreseeable future where I’m happy for once.

He’s happy, too, and the mere concept that he’s cleaned himself up without request is reassuring to my perspective. The paint has been obliterated from his face, from every nook and cranny in his bones, from the locks of russet hair swooping into his view, and the stench of paint is but a distant memory of last night.

Last night, when we rolled in the paint together and merged my red and his blue to coat ourselves in an enchanting purple constructed entirely from our own passion for corporal art and the art we find so abundantly in one another.

Dallon sifts through the drawer where he first located a towel, now in search of a washcloth to scrub the fermented paint from my skin, as he understands that it’ll become increasingly itchy with each minute. He quickly departs from the room to wet the cloth, then returning and flinging himself onto the bed like a child avid for a story time.

“You look like shit,” Dallon comments, tilting his mouth into a frown, as if to wonder how he could possibly fix my disheveled state of crust and grime, all in the lively shades of purple.

Flicking him, I joke, “That’s a great thing to hear from your best friend.”

“When will I become your _petit ami_?” he interrogates, leaning towards me in a display reminiscent of a cat hunting for attention, or in this case hunting for the bragging rights of being my boyfriend.

I push him away playfully. “Call yourself whatever you want, Dallon, because you’re the love of my life no matter what title you reserve.”

Dallon nods favorably, attempting weakly to hide his pleasure at what I’ve just said, and he begins his task of ridding my flesh of the pesky purple paint. He doesn’t tear across me like an impatient suburban mom, instead regarding every minute as worthless to him and ticking as much time away on his mental clock as he needs to effectively wipe away the colors. Dallon’s gentle about his duty, patting softly around my neck as I guide his hand for a misplaced fear of him hurting me, but I eventually relax in the acknowledgment that he would never do such a thing, not as long as he’s in his right mind, and though that may be near to now, every second counts, and I would know.

Dallon doesn’t speak, only focuses on the lavender flecking away from my skin to unsheath a rosy complexion that he promptly blanches with the substantial yet genial pressure of his lips, and I dive into him to resume with more affection, but he declines, reminding me that I still have bits of purple hanging from my jaw that need to be scrapped into the washcloth.

“You’re like the school nurse,” I jest while sluggishly recognizing what Dallon’s uniform would have to be in order to acquire that profession. “Never mind — don’t imagine that.”

“You’re full of ideas and full of shit,” Dallon remarks, amused by my wandering mind that never reached an ADHD diagnosis.

I ignore him with a kind of tacit bravery that’s penned into the contract when you acquaint yourself with someone. “Just cuddle with me, yeah?”

“Fine, but you’ll have to wash off the rest of the purple later, okay? By yourself.”

Mumbling an unintelligible comment about how a mundane shower would’ve mended this all yet treasuring the occurrence we just shared, I bring Dallon along with me on our path into the mattress, and I curl myself into his side with an arm slithering behind my shoulders.

“You’re so fucking crusty,” Dallon laughs, toying with a strand of my hair that’s been woven together by the powerful adhesive of paint.

“I could transfer that virus to your crusty ass, you know,” I hum into his neck, lids blocked against the warmth of his skin near mine to absorb his peppermint fragrance and the rare absence of his scarf for the substitute of an equally as navy baseball t-shirt.

“I’ve already been infected by your sticky personality, Brendon.” He ignites my hair with an abbreviated kiss to make it seem, at least a bit, as though he isn’t as salty as his words would suggest. “I don’t need any more.”

“Of course you do,” I disagree as my eyes mimic the allure and size of the moon, studying Dallon carefully. “Everyone craves beauty, and if you say that’s what I am, you’ll be coming back for more and more.”

Dallon nuzzles into me, brushing my nose with his own and smiling sweetly down at me. “You’re absolutely correct.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: beans everywhere what am I gonna do I'm just a smol meme farmer I don't deserve this
> 
> Quapchap: what's your catchphrase?
> 
> Apswap: I've started using "go fuck a nut" It's pretty handy tbh
> 
> ~Dacryigna


	11. this is so domestic

“I’m having a crisis, Brendon Urie.” Ryan pushes past me without acknowledging that it’s still early in the morning, but he wakes up early every day, sometimes around four thirty just to blog on his obscure Tumblr account that only posts memes and ironic aesthetic pictures with a twist in the background, so I suppose it’s a common thing to show up at his best friend’s house at nine o’clock in the morning and not consider the fact that they’re probably sleeping, but Dallon and I somehow managed to escape the life of extended unconsciousness and are awake to receive Ryan and his apparent crisis.

Thumbing the morning waste from my eyes, I inquire, “Ryan, why are you here?”

“I told you that I’m having a crisis — like, a really big crisis.” My friend sorts through my cabinets until he discovers the largest glass I own, then migrating towards the refrigerator, procuring a half-full gallon of milk, and staring at it disdainfully as if to say, “It’s not enough.”

“I doubt it’s that important, judging from your usual behavior that suggests the only things you care about are milk and gossip.”

“Okay, well I never come to you for advice anyway, so that should be a sign that this is astronomical.”

I allay a hand in my hair, distorting a sigh from my lungs due to the tiredness weighing me to the ground. “Just sit down, Ryan.”

He neglects my whims completely obliviously to instead ask, “Hey, do you have any more milk in here? You often do.”

It seems like Ryan didn’t come here to express his crisis to me, even if his countenance in the doorway would imply that, because all he’s doing is investigating my relationship with milk and how he can sneak into it, like he doesn’t have four gallons of the stuff at all times in his house. I might’ve felt a spark of anxiety when he burst into my home, because it’s my job as his best friends to offer solace, but where is that crisis now? Drowning in milk?

Ryan Ross is not a very serious person, and that’s reasonable for someone like him, for a teenager at a normal public high school, but I would’ve liked a larger attention span from him, as he’s dashing from a crisis to my availability of milk in a matter of seconds and expecting me to keep up with his antics. Regularly, I’m able to stay on track with his mindset, but it’s the morning, and I’m tired, even for someone who thrives in the early hours, and Ryan is generally just a wild person who isn’t at all compatible for this time of day. Or any time of day.

My father never liked his presence here, but my father is dead, so it doesn’t really matter, because he also never liked milk, and neither did I, so I’m sure he would be glad to know that Ryan is living off of our stock. In fact, the only people for whom I purchase milk are Kara and Ryan and now Dallon, not for me, but Kara may just be drinking it “ironically”.

Ironically or not, Ryan is still consuming the majority of the milk, and his thirst is indomitable. I don’t know if he enjoys that thick sensation at the back of his throat each time he devours it like a barbarian, but he’s still going at it a gallon a time, sometimes when there’s an extra quart left in the jug for him to drink.

“Why do you need more milk?” Dallon chimes in and reflects my concerns, having positioned himself at the kitchen table midway supinely, though the wooden chairs don’t allow for that, but he finds a way to recline. “Your glass is already full.”

Milk somersaulting down his chin and obstructing his speech, Ryan counters, “My glass may be full, but my heart is not.”

“Or are you simply drowning your sorrows in milk after that crisis that you still haven’t told us about?” I cross my arms triumphantly, and with great hesitation, Ryan sluggishly transports his glass to the table and sits, wary of my verdict.

“So I met this kind fellow right after you left.” Ryan’s tone nods towards bad news, even for a crisis, but that’s probably his dramatic nature shining through.

“Ah, your creeping finally came to fruition.”

“Um, yeah…and his name is Patrick Stump, and he has this nice orange hair that’s pretty rad, in my humble opinion, but it’s not dyed, though. It’s natural, kind of like fungus on a rock—”

Dallon’s hand elevates to halt my buzzing friend, attempting to sort through Ryan’s bullshit. “Is the crisis that you’ve found yourself trapped in a homosexual shitstorm solely for his fungus hair? Otherwise, where are you going with this?”

“Well…” Ryan pauses, contemplating the situation and deciding, if only for a moment, that Dallon may be correct. “Well, kind of, ‘cause his hair is pretty great — I’m just warning you — but he’s so depressed and stuff, and all these bad vibes are making me depressed, too.”

From what I’ve seen at school, Patrick is sort of a loner, but I thought he was fine with that. Introverts are instinctively geared towards isolation and are typically proud to be introverts, so I just left him alone to write in that journal of his. Now that I mull things over, it’s obvious that he’s insinuated his sister with some of his solitary qualities that emerged during Kara’s birthday party — the intelligence, the thoughtfulness, the planning — but Megan witnesses more fun in her life, and that’s the difference between them. That’s the reason Patrick is beaten down.

“Did you, like” — I gesture vaguely around my head while I scavenge for the perfect sentence to sum this all up — “help him through it?”

“I tried, but he was talking about this guy named Pete Wentz hanging out with this other guy named Gabe Saporta, both of whom allegedly attend our trash heap of a school and both of whom we’ll encounter with the knowledge that they’re springing tears to Patrick’s eyes.” Ryan’s arms tighten around his glass of milk, then releasing to soothe himself of the anger. “I guess he’s just lonely, and I’m enthusiastic about being his friend, but I’m just not ready for those bad vibes in my cornflakes, as Mr. Way would put it.”

Mr. Way, indeed, is a master of archaic phrases, some of which he formulates himself in the middle of painting in art class and shouts to the class for us to ponder, and he hungers for cereal just as much as Patrick has made clear.

“I’ve already concluded that Patrick’s a good kid, and I don’t want him to be like an old turtle at the zoo, you know? Like the ones with mold growing out of their backs? Yeah, you know those kinds of turtles?”

“I’m not sure I do, but you’re thoroughly shaken up by this ‘crisis’, so let’s pretend.”

Kara elects to pad down the stairs at this prime moment in search of breakfast, only to exhume the tattered remains of Ryan Ross glistening in his almost expired milk, and she almost turns straight around and ascends the stairs again, but Dallon calls for her to aid this wreck of a man.

“I don’t see why you want my advice.” She shrugs, nevertheless occupying a seat at a table flecked by stray droplets of milk. “I’m mostly obsessed with this meme circulating Tumblr right now. Did you know Ted Cruz is actually the Zodiac Killer?”

Not this again. I’ve had enough of this godforsaken meme, because I love it and hate it at the same time, but I’ve still been prepared for it since sixth grade when I wrote a report on the Zodiac Killer and ordered myself to read through the entirety of his Wikipedia page, including the absurd messages he left for the police. It’s something Ted Cruz would do, and I’m not bothered much by the inconsistencies, because this presidential candidate is first and foremost the original Zodiac Killer. No doubt, but I’m playing it cool, as my sister would definitely annihilate me on meme culture.

“I’m sure that’s true, Kara, but I’ll agree so you’ll stay.”

My sister scoffs. “I get the gist of what you’re wrestling with, Ryan, because you were loud enough to wake me from my deep slumber, and I have some advice for you.”

Ryan cushions himself for the blow, for the ultimatum, for the answer to his problems regarding Patrick Stump.

“Don’t be such a fucking idiot.” Kara smacks him on that pine cone gilded mop of hair he never tames, with force enough to throw him out of his chair, and she flees back into the living room to be finished with this pointless conversation.

“Who’s been vagueing about _you_ lately?” Ryan mutters, climbing back into his chair when he knows the girl has departed. “Your sister is quite the treat.”

“Hmm.” I glance towards her, now in close proximity to the decaying fire that died out around nine o’clock last night before Dallon and I lobbed paint at each other, and I realize how much of a sarcastic rat she is, how much it suits her nonetheless.

“Kara’s right, though,” Dallon concurs, signaling towards her location in the living room. “Just be Patrick’s friend and do what he needs, because trust me when I say it pays off in the end. You get happier.”

I swear I can see Dallon staring at me, but it’s fleeting and notional and nonexistent once I look his way, so I’ll never know.

“All right, sounds like a plan.” And pouring the last drops of milk from the carton into his glass, Ryan dispatches from my house and ports my cup along with him without troubling himself by returning it. “See you tomorrow, Urie.”

Then the door closes, and my milk is abducted.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I wanted to make sure you realised that you can never escape the milk fic don't mess with me
> 
> Quopchop: have your read the milk fic?
> 
> AopChop: I've read it twice and then this Frozen variation of it that was interesting to say the least (not doing that again)
> 
> ~DaCRANK-UP-THE-TERRORS-OF-THE-MILK-FIC


	12. they're practically married anyway

The end of the school day is always my favorite, ‘cause we’re out of the prison in which we’re contained for seven hours or more, and we’re able to do as we please until eight o’clock the next morning. The bullies never lurk here, because they’re intent on establishing the best seat on the bus for themselves, and there’s a large enough crowd for them to get caught if they did decide to target you. Once you successfully flee school, there’s only homework to throw a wrench in your life, but most people forget to assign it, so the only nuisance is the teachers trailing behind you, primarily this one.

“Brendon! Dallon!” Ms. Gunnulfsen shrieks, stumbling over her high heels while sprinting towards us before we enter the confines of the bus and escape this dungeon like we’d planned.

I whirl around after taking a moment to tile my face in a scowl, then utilizing a pleasant smile for the teacher. “Uh, yes, Ms. Gunnulfsen?”

“I’d like to ask how the tutoring is going. Dallon, would you like to answer?”

Dallon is caught off guard, swirled inside his own thoughts of psychology and how his art translates to that, what it means for his state of mind, but he quickly reconstructs his composure to respond. “Yeah, it’s going splendidly.”

“Aww, look.” Ms. Gunnulfsen pivots to me. “He’s already using adverbs.”

“He’s _been_ using adverbs.”

Her finely crafted brows dessicate upon her forehead, disappointed in my pedagogy. “So did you teach him much, then?”

“Not really.”

Sighing, she relents. “Okay. How about you come into my classroom, and we can review what Dallon has learned?”

With reluctance perturbing our gaits, we march towards Ms. Gunnulfsen’s densely decorated classroom where we’ll have nothing to provide her with in terms of tutoring, because all we’ve been doing when we’re supposed to be studying is discussing art and psychology and the occasional meme when Kara joins our conversations, and Dallon most likely doesn’t understand the technical terms of grammar, only what job they perform in a sentence.

I’m not certain which one of us will be hated more, as my duty was to teach Dallon English and American customs, but he’s the one who has to display his vacant knowledge of these topics to Ms. Gunnulfsen and await her flimsy judgment, so on our way we’re praying for ourselves and praying for each other in the hopes of deliverance.

Ms. Gunnulfsen will tear us apart if we don’t know something, but I’m faithful that Dallon comprehends at least something from English grammar and can save both me and him from the wrath of this unorthodox teacher.

We nervously sink into our chairs in the English classroom, and Ms. Gunnulfsen crosses her legs in anticipation with her hands cropping each other while she waits for us to open some magical binder and explain that Dallon has made such great progress!

When we don’t reply, don’t toss a bunch of papers and grammar worksheets in her face, she prompts us to share our discoveries. “Well what have you learned?”

Dallon and I glance at each other frantically, anxiety tiring our irises until all they recognize is fear and panic and an unnecessary survival mode, but Dallon knows I won’t supply an answer to Ms. Gunnulfsen’s question, so he wings it and screws the consequences.

“Brendon’s taught me subjective, objective, possessive, and reflexive pronouns and how to place them in sentences.” Dallon beams, though he controls no reason to do so; it’s most likely to portray a more accurate character to protect us from Ms. Gunnulfsen’s rage.

“So are you enjoying them?”

“Yeah, they’re fine, I guess. I’m not really one for grammar.”

They both laugh heartily, and it’s evident that Dallon’s becoming a teacher’s pet, though not by honest means or a desire to do so, rather that pitfall that originates from the web of lies one builds. Ms. Gunnulfsen doesn’t seem to mind that Dallon doesn’t love grammar all that much, and maybe it’s just pity for his French heritage and her belief that he doesn’t understand English, but it could also be from the fact that she doesn’t really like grammar, too, but she’s managed to stick around at this school for a healthy paycheck. As Kara frequently proclaims, not all heroes wear capes, but not all heroes terrorize their children, either, so I’m just not sure yet about Ms. Gunnulfsen. She’s trying, at least.

The woman nods nostalgically, vision cutting into her lap. “I was looking forward to the literature more than the grammar when I applied for this job, but I’m required to teach both!”

Actually, she’s required to teach grammar, literature, and history as a joint job with help from Ms. Claret on some days, but it’s obvious Ms. Gunnulfsen prefers the English portion of her job, so I don’t bother correcting her.

“Excuse me — I need to visit the ladies’ room for a moment.” My teacher slides from her desk and ventures away from the room, and I’m immediately scooched next to Dallon.

“Well that was speedy,” he comments, anyway warping an arm around my shoulders to assure me that he loves having my warmth so near to him, fresh orchid mingling with winter peppermint on our lips and on our fingertips as they rush through one another’s hair with tiny promises toted behind their backs.

That sensation is back to waltz around our heads, and Dallon and my lips are grasping each other to dance sweetly to the wistful music. They recruit our hands to participate in the audience, ordering them to tug at every scrap of fabric they can detect to draw the opposite person closer and closer, like they’ll let go without the notification.

Every second I’m nestled inside Dallon’s embrace is a welcoming gift, beckoning me to stay longer and longer, allowing me to explore parts of his soul previously unchartered, admonishing me that I’m impregnable in his touch just as he is in mine, and everything is much cozier. The sharks have lost their bite, the fire has lost its roar, and my anxiousness has lost its advantage over me.

All I’m focused on is the rhythmic flow of Dallon and myself chained together in the same ocean and later in the same coffin when this affair makes the world crumble at our feet, and it’s not a troubling thing to direct my attention towards, for Dallon is the syrup reposing high in the treetops on leaves and bark and dining to the melodies of the shuddering wind. He’s high on this elegance, and I’m high on him.

So I shouldn’t let go, and I don’t need to. It takes a few minutes for someone to finish up with the bathroom, right? Therefore, neither Dallon nor I give a single fuck about Ms. Gunnulfsen stumbling in on our silenced escapade, because it’s only been thirty-three seconds, and our teacher most likely hasn’t even rounded the corner to the ladies’ room.

But she has, and she’s so efficient that she’s walking straight through the door I thought would be closed for another two minutes, and here I am, kissing _mon petit ami_ , and I’m completely ignorant to the fact that she’s arrived until it’s too late for my survival.

While Ms. Gunnulfsen isn’t homophobic, I had anticipated some sort of disenchanted reaction to this sight as she weakly endeavors to hide her true emotions towards it, but what we secure is much different.

My teacher is grinning as broadly as glass regurgitates light, and she’s practically shaking by now. “I knew you two would be great for each other!”

Dallon and I mirror confused (and slightly distressed) expressions, but Ms. Gunnulfsen isn’t shamed by them. Like, at all. She’s still fucking smiling like she just heard the best news of her career. Is her life really so boring that she freaks out over two teenage boys ascertaining safety in each other?

“Did you ask me to be his tutor so this would happen?” I interrogate, and Ms. Gunnulfsen’s joy is instantaneously quelled by the painful truth.

“I figured this school needs more LGBT+ representation, and yeah — this isn’t a movie or a book or anything where you can force representation into literature, but you can subtlety intervene and boil a chain of homosexuality to spruce up the atmosphere.”

My teacher is right — this _isn’t_ a movie or a book, and it’s immoral to shove two people together so they can act out someone’s fantasies. I’m not saying I’m ungrateful that she did this, because I have an amazing _petit ami_ to prove it, but it’s a bit strange, you’ll have to admit.

Our silence lasts for approximately twenty-one seconds, severed by a straightforward (well, not so straight) inquiry. “Um, miss, may we go please?”

Disheartened, Ms. Gunnulfsen eventually consents after four seconds of gnarling her lip. “Yeah. If you hurry, you’ll be able to catch the last bus.”

“Sounds good to me.” Grabbing Dallon’s hand, I drag him out of the classroom and away from our puppeteer of an English teacher, farther from the memories of whatever just happened. It’s easier to cope like that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: what the fuck is ms. gunnulfsen anymore idek
> 
> Quwaychay: why do I always distort the word "question"
> 
> Aysway: it's probably related to this one time in sixth grade when my teacher said my friend writes in small handwriting so she can be unique but for me it just keeps my mind fresh
> 
> ~Daquestion (SEE, I DID IT, YOU FUCKNUTS, I SPELLED IT CORRECTLY)


	13. I didn't mean for this to be so emotional it just came out wrong

“Are you familiar with cherophobia?” Dallon asks absently, pecking away with a dulled pencil at a drawing of something he won’t show me. He claims it’ll ruin the surprise if he does.

“No, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten me,” Ryan responds while working on a piece that’s much less advanced, whether that’s due to his lack of art skill or his unwillingness to cooperate with adept expectations for his facility.

You would’ve predicted that Ryan Ross would try to create something beautiful out of his art, considering he’s professed his love for Mr. Way’s teaching style on countless occasions (about seventeen times, to be exact), but he’s always off in his own variegated thoughts, so he’s mindlessly scratching the paper with something about whom he doesn’t care enough to pay attention, and somehow through all of this vacancy in his brain the only thing he can do is talk, and talk he does quite well.

“It’s not a common topic to the outside world, but I regard it as one of the most interesting, and you’ll observe it often with psychologists and patients who feel emotionally detached.”

“So is it the fear of experiencing emotions?” I conjecture to guide Dallon along this subject, knowing that Ryan won’t press further than to broach the matter.

“It’s close. Cherophobia is the anxiety of being too jubilant for fear that something dismal will then transpire.”

When discussing psychology, everything is interesting to Dallon, because psychology itself is interesting to him, so I never expect something that’s actually intriguing, though Dallon can transmute it so that it captures you in fascination. However, today’s conversation promises a fruitful outcome by its own means, a peculiar connection tying itself around me and ordering a continuation of the topic.

Now that I reflect on my past, I realize that I have encountered the troubles of cherophobia, if only briefly, the “too good to be true” doctrine drugging me up until I know nothing else besides the instructions to be wary of any truly viable saccharinity, and it’s a ploy, but I believe it like it’s a hypnotic marketing campaign intended to alchemize me into falsified chemicals and dust, into nothing that anyone could trust like I never trusted the ingratiation that brought me to this wretched state.

Cherophobia isn’t the worst of my concerns, really. Being forgotten is. I don’t need a legacy, a hero’s tale, a placque upon the wall. I just want the nodding of heads in a greeting on the street, the occasional letter in my mailbox, my birthday on their calendar so they know that I’ve trudged through another year of suffering, and I want them to be proud of that.

How burdensome would it be to pass by someone like you’re both ghosts, like you don’t know how they take their coffee or how they style their hair or how they walk or how through everything they endured they still survived? How burdensome would it be to never understand which one of you is living and which one of you is dead? How burdensome would it be to yearn to say something but never open your mouth because your words don’t mean a thing to them? How burdensome would it be to portray that shadow on their wall that they’re always scared of every night? How burdensome would it be to know that you were their everything and then recognize that maybe you’re worse off than without them they could ever be without _you_?

It would be a lot to carry on your back, on your conscience as it shivers at the notion that it perhaps wasn’t your fault but it could’ve been, because amnesia is that karma you actually believe in, the karma that’s far away enough from religion to maintain, and it’s come back around to destroy you.

“Don’t you think it’s absurd?” Dallon ponders, epitomizing my thoughts. “How you could actually _want_ to remain depressed? Isn’t it enough to be huddled around your final words _without_ a choice?”

Dallon Weekes may not have been the joyous artist I had once respected him as, but art is a bewildering subject. An artist may be able to paint a fear that echoes deep in your soul while never meeting the emotion themselves, and an artist simultaneously may be able to paint exactly what they’re feeling in ways previously unforetold. They can alienate you from your emotions because of how vivid their masterpieces are, because of how lachrymose and symbolic each stroke on the canvas is to the artist, and you simply have no idea how to mimic that, so you begin to wonder how someone could’ve possibly painted it better than you ever felt it yourself.

This is how Dallon functions, if only in the minuscule details, such as the monochrome fabrics glassing his body with only the blues peeking out. That’s his style of informing the world that everything is black, white, and sometimes grey, but you can burn a flair into it. You can add blue to graphite, and you can remedy your life.

I’ll later be questioning how Dallon could ever decode this loophole, but for now I’m mesmerized by the storm clouds of his pencils reclining by one single spark of lapis that changes the game forever.

“I’m not berating people with cherophobia for witnessing these sorrows, because they can’t control it and might as well be the most terrified out of us all,” Dallon proceeds, expression immaculate and blank to protect his true opinion, a true opinion that correlates to him more than he would share with us, “but I hope they’ll eventually identify a source of cheer in their lives. They deserve something to cherish them like a friend.”

Smiling through the padlock my eyes clip to the man’s, I solicit, “I hope the same for you, Dallon.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you hope that for me?” He’s grinning, skin doubling over in lines weathered from laughing. “I don’t need it, because I’ve already cherished _you_ like a friend.”

Even Ryan doesn’t speak, at least for a seven seconds, his vision intersecting us to absorb the tacit phenomena whirring all around us, as if he doubts that he could ever swallow such a connection with another person, a connection that Dallon and I have glued together out of incipient inquiries towards the cafeteria. I have faith that he’ll warm himself with the tender contact of someone else, even if he doesn’t exchange that premonition.

Mr. Way is completing his rounds across the classroom, and he stumbles upon our silent party of introspective thinking, of philosophy and fear. He’s never been accustomed to this kind of quietness, so he earnestly claps Dallon over the back to peer over at what he’s drawing.

I’m somewhat jealous that Mr. Way is allowed to see what Dallon is sketching when he guards me from it until he’s thoroughly finished and has tapped the final details onto the piece so that he’s content with what he’s constructed. Ever since Dallon elucidated that he loves to draw, I’ve been craving to see each step of the manufacturing process to comprehend just how much he’s altered it, but I’m unsuccessful. What a shame it is that Dallon won’t confide in me what it takes to build something so magnificent.

I know nothing about the wonders he manifests out of thin air, about the emotions he inks them with, about the thoughts he ticks through his head while his paintbrush swims across the a blank canvas to form something that no one realized could be etched into existence, but I seek the knowledge. Mr. Way is already there.

“You’re really going places, Dallon!” Mr. Way exclaims, hand still modeling over my friend’s shoulder as he trembles subtlety in discomfort.

He nods. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’d love to see your art in a gallery one day. I think you could do it, if you really wanted to achieve that.” Mr. Way pauses. “ _Do_ you want to achieve that?”

Just like Dallon doesn’t aim to be tethered to the profession of psychology, he doesn’t aim to be tethered to art, either. I find nothing wrong about spending my life with something that I love, and I’m confident in saying that Dallon loves both of those subjects, so I have no clue why Dallon isn’t the same. Perhaps it’s spontaneity at work.

It’s obvious that Dallon doesn’t aspire to answer this question, but Mr. Way is his teacher (and his favorite teacher, too), so he struggles through the words. “We’ll see in the future, I suppose.” His voice is syruped in an ambiguous substance, a hybrid between uncertainty that he’ll be an artist and the dubiety that he’ll ever withstand enough life to materialize into any sort of future.

Dallon is supposed to be the first happy artist, but anything goes when he’s not an artist at all. He could be smoldering in hell, though because he isn’t an artist, he isn’t beholden to me to comply. He doesn’t tell me about his art, and he won’t tell me what he’s suffering through. He’s going to be in trouble if not already, and I’ll have no knowledge of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: *sweats nervously* so what's up with airplane food amirite
> 
> HitTheQuan: what is a stereotype about your country?
> 
> RobSwanson: that Americans own bald eagles and are really patriotic (I guess the patriotic part is true, mostly in the South)
> 
> ~Dacountry


	14. ready 4 high school

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved science, everything about it, because quite simply science _is_ everything. Science is how a human breathes in and out like a drum beat, how the weather shifts over time across the sky, how the earth has existed for billions of years and no one knows how. Science has been the class I’ve anticipated since the beginning of the school hours and yearned for on days where it is absent from my schedule, and this adoration for the subject could change a terrible teacher into a tolerable teacher, sometimes even the best I’ve ever had.

Our current teacher, Mr. Euringer, is an actual treat, his pedagogy so fine and precise to convey messages we previously knew nothing about, yet he punctuates his lectures with fun and dashes of humor here and there to stimulate our bored minds, and if I didn’t enjoy science to the highest point already, Mr. Euringer ensured that I do.

My respect for this teacher was reciprocated at the beginning of the year, and he chose to ignore the fact that I have an unofficial vendetta with the P.E. teacher, with whom he’s well acquainted, and Mr. Euringer signed me up for a science fair with confidence that I’d blow all of the judges away, and he was somehow correct. By some luck, my mainstream volcano project that every fourth grader erects for a passing grade managed to dazzle the judges with the science that was at least more advanced than those fourth graders, and I was the proudest of myself that I’d been.

Throughout the year, we’ve bonded in the cognizance that I’m the only person who knows what the hell they’re doing, the only person who offers the simple answers to his simple questions (or simple to me), and I’m apparently his best student.

Every day, I look forward to the fifty-five minutes of science class where I can feel at home and comfortable in my responses to a subject that I love, and each second is clutched to me like it’s the last thing I have. It kind of is, as I hate most of the world and hate it with a burning passion for all its contradictions

But now all I can focus on is the kicking of feet under the table, some from Dallon in a playful game, some from Ryan attempting to halt our shenanigans, all frenzied and laboring to stay hidden, but Mr. Euringer’s watchful eye spares no one, not even me.

“Brendon? Dallon?”

Ryan shoves his feet away from us before Mr. Euringer catches on to my friend’s alibi that dictates that he was, in fact, involved in our schemes, because he’s mostly innocent anyway. He was only trying to stop the kicking before we landed in trouble, so I suppose he shouldn’t be punished, and it’s not some case of impunity due to his status as my best friend, for he is truly innocuous. In addition, I’d hate to see his antics in detention, so I’d rather not be chained to him for an hour after school.

“You’re disrupting the class,” Mr. Euringer continues, staring only for a moment before poring over the textbook poised in his hand once more. “See you in detention.”

Dallon and I just glance indifferently at each other, because we’ve never been in detention in our lives, but it’s not like we really care a bit. We’d be together, I guess, with the availability for foot games under the table. That’ll be interesting, and Mr. Armstrong will surely abhor us by the end.

“Is everyone here that should be?”

No one acknowledges Mr. Armstrong, partially because of their teenage phlegmaticness and partially because of their hatred towards him for perpetuating this cycle of detention by volunteering to proctor this session, so the man only nods with his lips compressed into a line and dips his head towards his book while kicking his feet on the desk in the faith that he’ll be regarded as the cool teacher who really doesn’t want to be hosting detention but is rather obligated to do so.

Mr. Armstrong is my math teacher and never bothers to converse with me much, besides the casual talk of arithmetic, and I don’t expect him to, but what I’ve seen of him _is_ cool. He’s the only guy at this school who sports eyeliner without shame and has dyed his hair numerous times, now submerging in raven black, and he’s always willing to spruce up his classes with pleasant videos and terrible jokes that plant laughs in our lungs nevertheless, including the obtrusively banned puns.

Everyone else seems to like Mr. Armstrong, with his smile that quirks up at the end and the locks that are never in place, with his fascinating teaching of mathematics that captivates even the most provincial of people, but no one in detention is thankful that he’s supervising them, that he’s trapping them here. Yeah, he’s on the lenient side of teachers, but there are still rules.

He’s broken some of them, though. There’s still hope for us.

“Meet me in the WC,” Dallon commands in a breath caked with secrecy, so disparate from the Dallon who would never even _bend_ a rule, let alone have me congregate in the bathroom with him to discuss who knows what, when the principal has everlastingly declared that we can only visit that place once someone else has returned so that there’s only one person at a time, but once again Mr. Armstrong is the cool teacher and grants us safe passage into the water closet.

When we enter the bathroom, the place has been deserted for the even absent janitorial staff to clean, and the kids who wound up in detention, who usually occupy this space to escape from the dreary classroom life, aren’t here either, leaving Dallon and me to whatever it is that he has planned for us in the remaining time of this ponderous session of penitence.

 _Mon petit ami_ lurches into the stall along with me while laughing at the games his feet are playing on mine like they did during science glass, a game that threw us in detention, but I guess it’s not so torturous; Mr. Armstrong is a cool guy.

Dallon’s giggling even when my hands snatch around the tie as blue as his scarves to draw him towards me, and my lips drive languidly onto his with my lids shielded against the bathroom lights to pretend like I’m not sinning right now and sinning always, but this kind of sinning is a warm honey against my skin, a warm honey that is forever Dallon Weekes.

I desire to be everlastingly woven in Dallon’s grasp, but perceiving a noise that is only a hallucination, I spring back from my companion, which automatically kills the mood. Dallon doesn’t seem to mind, though, only beaming sweetly and ushering me away from the stall to fix himself up, then proceeding with my own image like a fussy suburban mother professionalizing her son’s already perfect hair.

Just before stepping out of the water closet and back into Mr. Armstrong’s gaze, Dallon adjusts his tie to make it appear as though he wasn’t just kissing a guy in a bathroom stall like some sort of impromptu stripper, and he almost ropes his hand to mind, then realizing that this is a homophobic school and we are a closeted couple. The thought was there, though, and I want him to be safe from the same bullying I endured, so we only stride back to the classroom in silence.

Mr. Armstrong glances up from his book (the cover screams something about aliens and fire), though it isn’t brief like most people’s stares, the ones that are merely intended to identify the human brushing through the door. Instead, his eyes follow us, particularly Dallon, back to our seats, though he calls my friend back up for further questioning.

“What’s in your pocket, son?” Mr. Armstrong submits himself to narrowing brows in an ordeal to decode the veritable answer before the lying one flies past him.

“An experiment.” Dallon is _smiling_ for whatever reason, but that smile is expeditiously stomped upon by the look of disappointment on Mr. Armstrong’s face, and he contemplates if he should’ve smiled at all.

It’s as if Mr. Armstrong is a replica of me, just with more power to force Dallon to explain why he’s so eager about killing himself with pills he never researched enough to understand, and though I shouldn’t be excited at the prospect of Dallon spilling his secrets, I can’t help it. I should really star on reality television.

“What kind of experiment? See how quickly you can get drugged up?”

By now the other kids are snickering, and I want to defend my companion with every fighting ember glowing within me, but that’s unnecessary, for Dallon refuses to be embarrassed by these imbeciles; he only revises his approach.

“Sir, have you heard of the placebo effect?”

The teacher nods slowly, now relocating his book to the desk and sliding his feet off of it. “Vaguely. A guy in World War Two runs out of morphine, lies to his patients, and doesn’t see any perverse results, so now we use trickery to improve our mental health.”

“I wouldn’t call that a vague recollection, but you’re nevertheless correct.” Dallon uproots the pill bottle from his pocket to display it to the world, and some of the kids strain to behold it. “I’m testing out how placebo pills affect me when I know they’re fake.”

“Don’t you think that’s risky? What if the outcome is dangerous?”

Dallon grins. “Anything for science.”

“For me, that’s anything for the _kids_ at this school, so I’ll just go ahead and confiscate those, placebo or not.”

“They’re harmless!” Dallon shrieks and withholds the pill bottle from the teacher, but a kid next to him snares it and tosses it to Mr. Armstrong.

Catching it, the man contradicts my companion. “No, they’re hazardous.”

And I know I’m Dallon’s friend and should support him no matter what, but I’m going to have to agree with Mr. Armstrong on this. There are risks we can’t afford to take, and I don’t want my friend to injure himself because of them. I’m not sorry for protecting him. I’d be sorrier if planning his funeral became a mandatory event to my schedule, and Dallon needs to recognize that I’m only here to preserve the light that’s slowly tiptoeing from his eyes. Nothing else.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: shit goes downhill from here,,,,,you're all fucking dead( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> EDIT: OKAY SO I FORGOT THAT I DIDN'T POST THIS AND I WAS REALLY CONFUSED AS TO WHY MY REGULAR READERS WEREN'T CRYING BUT HERE I AM I'M SORRY
> 
> QuompChomp: do you like mr. armstrong?
> 
> AmpSwamp: yeah he's A++ rad (get it cause he's a teach er hahahahh( but seriously I just love Billie Joe Armstrong so much i'm cri
> 
> ~Darmstrong


	15. ur under arrest 4 being a meanie

“Hey, I’ll catch up with you. I just need to get something from my locker,” I promise, and hesitantly Dallon saunters away to fulfil it, occasionally slinging worried glances over his shoulder while he stretches down the hall.

Now this is the part of the low budget horror movie where that nameless side character gets murdered and the protagonist finds them dead once waiting a considerable amount of time before that in the expectancy that their friend would’ve re-appeared earlier, but I’ve been dead since 2005, so it really doesn’t matter.

The hallways are vacant and echoing with the tiniest of steps around and around like a tunnel, and not even the casual bully lurks within its shadows. This is why the time beyond school hours are a blessing to the anxious, to the anxious with the justification of the high school mafia engulfing them in punches.

My locker is tucked into a measly spot near the math classroom, where the detention session unfolded with harrowing outcomes, only two sections to the left and on the top row. It’s nothing I ever debate changing, the walls blank and glazed in silver metal that’s like winter to the touch, therefore repelling anyone who tries to come close to it, and it preserves its own uniqueness from the fear that our controlling vice-principal will routinely check the contents of it. It’s not like I’d store anything cryptic inside there, but I know he’s never enjoyed the obnoxious memes of the millennials.

Buzzing through my combination in the paranoia that someone is breathing down my neck and reading every number, I swing the door to my locker open and reveal that bland old scenery backing the mountains of books and covert notes exchanged during class that never persuaded me to throw away.

The English manual I had forgotten scolds me for abandoning it with the rest of the nonsensical textbooks when I swore I would exhaust its abilities on teaching Dallon more about grammar in the occasion that Ms. Gunnulfsen would ever question us about our tutoring again, though after what happened yesterday, I’m positive she’ll steer clear. Better safe than sorry, however.

On the contrary, if Dallon was able to extract four types of pronouns out of his memory to project to Ms. Gunnulfsen, I bet that he’ll be able to extract something else, too, something that isn’t as astute as subjective, objective, possessive, and reflexive cases. If he knows those items, he’ll know things below it in intensity, but we must continue to progress.

Whacking the locker door on its hinges just for the humor, I pivot towards the end of the corridor and make my way towards the front lawn, where Dallon will be anticipating my arrival so that we can return home and study the wonders of English grammar. He’ll be pleased, no doubt, but not pleased by the sight I’m witnessing once I round the corner.

Maybe I wasn’t the nameless side character I had once predicted, as nothing happened to me besides the normal jolt of my locker being slammed closed. Instead, I observe Dallon unrolled across another set of metal lockers we kids all hate with a fiery passion for being so sharp on our fingers, but I’m certain Dallon is hating them more and more with each second he’s imprisoned in Spencer Smith’s grasp.

Visualizing the classroom in my mind, I do recall Spencer being there, just cowering in the back so I wouldn’t notice him and fabricating a tactical approach of secrecy. I realize now that Dallon may have been the target instead of me, at least after what Mr. Armstrong confiscated and made a scene out of, and I conjecture that I know what they’re bullying him about.

It’s not the usual sting manifested out of the bully’s own insecurities, nothing that really makes any sense beyond the generic punchlines. This one is personal, as if Spencer’s held a long lasting feud with Dallon despite him only being here for less than a week, and the insults will drill to his core. This is no high school drama with only the regular words spat at the victim. This is traumatization.

Dallon is shivering in the restraints that fix him to the lockers, opposite from the man I knew, the man who has never feared the verdict of a bully but is nevertheless gasping for air within the clutch of one. I’m not bashing him for being hypocritical, because I’m too loyal to him to stay silent.

“Fucking psycho,” Spencer snarls. “Do you cut yourself every night? Or are you too busy getting stoned?”

Dallon doesn’t answer, doesn’t feed the flame, to instead quiver inconsolably against the force of Spencer Smith without admitting to anything, because he is cognizant of how bullies operate, and he is cognizant that they need a steady flow of oxygen to survive, a steady flow of oxygen that he will never provide them with.

The punches vibrate upon Dallon’s skin as I attempt inadequately to save him, my feet too lethargic in comparison to my ambition, but only one bruise diffuses upon him once I’m tearing my friend away from the bullies and guiding him back down the hall.

“Is your little boyfriend saving you?” Spencer wails, mimicking a crying baby, though that’s not so difficult to achieve.

I ignore him. “You’re okay,” I reassure Dallon, more of a stock phrase than a truth, and Dallon nods to himself as he shudders from the acute trauma.

“I’m okay.”

~~~~~

“Kara, may I use your concealer?” I yell upon entering the house, lugging a mangled Dallon along with me.

It had been quite the journey just to tug him up the stairs, but after two minutes of weary limbs and stumbling feet, we eventually accomplished our mission that shouldn’t be as difficult as it was to complete, and now we begin our next task of locating the concealer that Kara most likely will never share.

Kara egresses from the living room and into the kitchen, a book in hand and a scowl in heart. “Why do you need my concealer? Did you finally get acne? Mom said you would. I never understood how she could think that, though. You wash your skin obsessively, and you’re always stealing my washcloths. Stop doing that, yeah? It’s really annoying.”

I halt my sister’s nattering by gesturing to the bloodied Dallon Weekes, who’s smiling sheepishly as if he’s done something for which to be condemned, but all he did was experiment psychology (unsafely, I might add, but that’s not proving his point) and was punished for it by mindless bullies of all people, not even sentient beings with a functional brain.

Dallon may be some of those things he was labeled as, and he may not be any of them, and that’s not really my place to judge, but he’s shaken up nonetheless. Tears have colonized his face, on a Mayflower originating from his eyes and sailing down his cheeks, and even though he’s endeavoring to hide his pain, it’s still as clear as a morning on the seas.

Kara comprehends this, too, with only a quick gander at my friend, and her shoulders bridge into despondency. “I’ll get my concealer.” She dashes up the stairs two at a time, allowing Dallon to unlawfully object.

“I don’t need concealer.”

“Why not? You’re bruised and bruising still.”

“That’s the point!” Dallon exclaims, catapulting his arms around me while twirling around. “Isn’t the purple just lovely? Most things don’t have backstories, Brendon, but this does.”

I shake my head, disbelieving and lachrymose. “Why do you want to wear a bully’s crest so prominently?”

Sighing warmly with his head tipped to the ceiling, Dallon confesses, “Because if suffering is just mankind’s way of enthusing the happiness when it finally comes, then I want to show the world that I’m on my way.”

“That’s not how it works in high school. You’re going to unwittingly flaunt the stares of people who hate you, and there will be more attacks flying towards your helpless body. This is not what you want.”

“He’s right, Dallon,” Kara concurs before Dallon can once again protest, now descending the stairs with a tube of concealer inserted into her fingers. “Bullies aren’t going to leave you alone if their work is acknowledged by the people at school.”

“But they’ll know that I covered it up and will think that I’m ashamed.” Dallon’s hands flutter by his side, like moths looming circles through the air to heal their anxiety.

Fretting the curve of my nose with my fingers, I exhale sluggishly and dare not accept my friend’s terms. “Dallon, we’re not arguing about this.”

“We shouldn’t have to. You should be confident that I know what’s best for me.”

“Dallon, I’ve been through this same battle before.” A tremor suddenly dehydrates my voice, cracking my throat with nails. “This is how you play it.”

And in the exact defiance I had warned him against, Dallon utters a simple word: “No.”  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: when the only straight you are is "straight up bitch"
> 
> Qweepteep: do you think dallon should've used concealer?
> 
> Aeepsweep: yes, because then no one would ask about it, but also no, because then the bullies would know that dallon is ashamed of having the bruise
> 
> ~Dacradle


	16. fight me I dare you

I would’ve never expected Dallon Weekes to be so intractable, so stubborn and foolish, so full of these qualities that will throw him to the wolves of high school until he wishes he had applied concealer, but he didn’t, and he’s in for trouble, a trouble that I can’t resolve easily.

It’ll take time, and lots of it. It’ll take teary conversations with each other when he’s finally aware that he might not be able to withstand this tumult. It’ll take all of the doubts I once experienced, flooding back like the incoherent horrors of deja vu. It’ll take injuries mutilating the mirror, with the crimson of blood and the violet of a bruise, with the acceptance that this affliction has never been okay.

Now, Dallon is strong. There’s no denying that. He knows the rules, the ropes, the minds of bullies, and he knows how to toy with them to his advantage. He’s better off than I ever was in middle school, but no one is safe.

I’m not saying I won’t console him if he is ever attacked by the bullies, but he should’ve been smart enough to realize that leaving his bruise out in the open isn’t healthy for both protecting himself and protecting my anxiety from sweating through its boundaries, because Dallon is my best friend, and it’s my duty to worry as much as I can about him while guarding him from every possible threat, but he’s refusing help, and my best friend senses are screaming at me to do something. I’ll be beholden to tell them that I can’t, that I’m helpless and inane, that despite my knowledge of bullies, I have no idea how to cure anything related to them.

When I was in middle school, life was hell, and I was perpetually horrified by every shift in the air, every tapping of feet on tile, every tick of the clock. So I began to count so that I would know what is truly the clock and what isn’t, what is the bullies emerging from the other end of the corridor and what isn’t, what is my heart racing in my chest and what is simply the paranoia that never relents.

Fear has struck a blade over my wit until it’s sharp and effective, until it manages to defend my weak brain from any warning against me and any bully that so much as breathes my way, and it may be unnecessary, like a corporal verbiage, but I depended on it at the time. Now it’s just excess, but it’s excess born from well placed caution, though it seems with the state of things that it’s not so excess anymore.

I will rely on it to shelter Dallon, even if he declines my help. I’ve taken it upon myself to view life in a lens of assisting my friends, primarily one who has been excluded from our adventures and is now worried while asking about them.

“What’s on your face?” Ryan asks obliquely, then squinting to decode the answer before his sleuthing is discredited by the real response. “Is that a bruise? What happened to you yesterday? A street fight? Why would Brendon allow you to get involved with that?”

I would _never_ allow Dallon to get involved with a street fight, and he should never allow _himself_ to get involved with a street fight due to common sense, but Dallon isn’t heeding my advice anyway and is too out of his right mind to tend to his own welfare, so I suppose any attempt to save him is null and void.

Dallon limbs bean each other uncomfortably, and he chucks a glance at me to evoke sympathy, a sympathy that I won’t willingly expel because of his ignorance to this situation with the concealer or lack thereof. “Yeah, it’s a bruise. What does it matter?”

Dallon is cognizant that I’m frustrated with him, because chances are he’s never before been slandered by people that should be his friend, and he doesn’t understand how this school operates, how to survive in it. He won’t cover his bruise, and he won’t help himself, so somehow I’m the bad guy for suggesting that his health is more important than a metaphor? A bruise doesn’t have a viable backstory. Dallon does, and pain could be a part of it.

“Well it’s not like you acquire a bruise from Brendon tutoring you in English, now is it?”

“No, not from tutoring, but the real anecdote isn’t important to anyone.” Dallon’s teeth twitch against each other over and over, contemplating how to avoid discussing this, discussing something that could’ve been effortlessly mended with Kara’s concealer, but he declined its presence on his skin, and now he’s acting as though it’s Ryan’s fault for pointing it out.

“It’s important to me,” Ryan disagrees. “You could’ve gotten in a fight, for all I know.”

I desire to inform Ryan that Dallon _did_ , in fact, get into a fight — a one sided fight, but a fight nonetheless — and just won’t share the primary events, but that would ruin my quiet veneer of chewing sluggishly a baked potato and not vocalizing a single word, so I lean back (metaphorically, of course) and observe as the drama swishes around me.

“Not a fight that _I_ started.”

Not a fight at all, really, because Dallon was too stunned to fight back, to defend himself, and he’s even scared right now. All that occurred was Spencer threatening him with brows so gnarled that it’s a surprise they’re still functional, with lips so pinched that they lapsed into white, with every warning that shouldn’t affect Dallon but does, because to the outside world they’re petty insults that don’t mean a thing, but to him he knows deep down that maybe they’re correct about who he is and what he’s been through and apparently what scarlet winters on his floor every night, and maybe they’re the only ones who truly understand him.

“You don’t seem like the fighting type, or in your case, the type to be _caught_ in a fight.” Ryan’s still whirring like that bruise on Dallon’s cheek isn’t as prominent as it is, like no matter if Dallon is or isn’t the fighting type he didn’t wind up in that situation, like he suddenly knows every detail about yesterday’s trauma and can pick it apart, but I surmise he might as well know more than Dallon himself, because my friend is so unresponsive that it’s as if he’s been coronated by amnesia and spat back out to us in time for lunch.

A sigh rows out of Dallon’s lungs, a jaded lullaby. “Yet it happened.”

My fork clatters against the plate in a signal that I’m speaking up for myself. “You know, Dallon, if you protested so thoroughly about trashing Kara’s concealer at home, then why are you being so evasive? I thought you were proud of that bruise. Where is your pride now?”

Dallon should’ve recognized that I’m upset with him, but he’s nevertheless astonished at my unbridled animosity. I will forever be his friend, but he needs to fathom that a friend’s job is to aid the other. I’m unapologetically ruthless about his security.

Battling through ambivalent emotions towards me, partially distressed and partially nervous, he counters, “I didn’t say I would advertise the event, and I’m not even advertising the bruise, either. It’s just there as a reminder of what ghastly deeds Spencer oppressed me with, and—”

Speaking of Spencer, that’s who’s approaching us with a piggish swagger in his step and a business card in his fingers, which he promptly tosses onto the table and scoots away, the same gait his mentor.

I slant towards the card to read it, each torturous word intended to calumniate anyone who seeks help, anyone who’s taking care of themselves, anyone who is attentive to the stigma forced upon mental illnesses, anyone who’s breaking down through it all, and the entire note is laden with hatred for Dallon.

_Ms. Lindsey Ballato, PhD_

_Trauma, depression, and anxiety_

_Las Vegas Mental Health Associates_

Without a second glance at the card, I smite it against the table and rise from my seat to accost the treacherous Spencer Smith who decided it was a clever joke to trivialize mental illnesses and those who are racked by them. I’m not certain whether or not that applies to the receiver of the note, but I’ll strike Spencer in honor of the world, if not in honor of Dallon.

“Do you think this is funny?” I shriek, hastening my feet towards Spencer, and though Ryan’s face fevers with apprehensions, he doesn’t stop me from obtaining justice for my companion.

Halting, Spencer smirks, swelling from ear to ear like a hyena. “I thought it was pretty great as a prank, but I figured Dallon also kind of needed it.”

“What you know of sickness is from lies,” I snarl, pushing Spencer, and he stumbles back from a lack of faith in my strength.

Mr. Way, now on lunch duty, corners me, snatches me away from that tyrannical bully, and palms me a pass to the principal’s office. “This kind of violence is not tolerated at this school,” he declares, features carved in stone. “I’m disappointed in you.”

I look back at Dallon, at Ryan, at a sneering Spencer, and I acknowledge what has become of me. “I am, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is killing me why the fuck are they so bitter to each other I'm just ???
> 
> while I'm writing this, it's the day of the mishapocalypse pray for me
> 
> THE DAY I'M POSTING THIS, I AM SICK [AS FRICK] AND I AM DYING
> 
> Quonnie: Have you experienced the mishapocalypse?
> 
> Aonnie: it's my second time
> 
> ~Dakotalypse


	17. princiPAL

My feet have lost their vigor, sloping into madness with each step I pound into the variegated tile of the administration office hallway on my route to the principal’s room for a crime that I shouldn’t have committed in such a pool of anger but nevertheless did, because I’ve professed my duty as Dallon’s friend many times before, and I will not surrender even in the threshold of punishment.

Yes, maybe I am to blame for abandoning Dallon so that I could retrieve my English book, for practically forcing him to wear concealer (even though he didn’t), for overreacting to the mental health business card situation, for everything that skewed itself into a frenzy, but surely that was all because I’m Dallon’s friend, right?

I’m being reprimanded for sticking up for a companion who did nothing wrong besides experiment with pills, and it’s not like I wouldn’t gladly do it again to protect him, but it’s unfair that devils such as Spencer Smith still reign at this school, still peg anxiousness at our hearts, still slip away without a scratch on them or their permanent record, while I’m the one with the pink principal sheet being crumpled within my fists on my way to the office of a boss about whom I know little to nothing.

No one really knows anything, so we’ve fabricated absurd myths about him, like the idea that he is a vampire, or the idea that there is no principal and the school is being operated solely by his subordinates who only claim to work for someone, and though we recognize that this is all fun and games, it’s stimulating to our phobia of him.

Principal Hall is usually hiding in the shadows of this school, never materializing in the corridors for any reason in order to save that opportunity for the rare assemblies that he schedules regarding community service and the occasional choral performance, but other than that, no one really knows much about him, besides the wild stories the frequent troublemakers narrate to us next to the science building in between class periods.

Everyone at this school is terrified of him, and I suppose that correlates to the fear of things that you cannot see, and because he’s always lurking in his office, no one ever does see him, so an ambiguous nervousness is ringed around him.

I, personally, have never submitted myself to that peril of never trusting our very own principal, because I find no reason to do so. The teachers and administrators seem to like him enough to converse with the man, and though they’re adults with more social skills, I’ll have to side with them on that one. The kids are much more wary of Principal Hall, but that’s because they’re kids — immature, floppy, unguided kids — and the frequent troublemakers are, well, frequent, so it makes sense that their punishment is steadily increasing with each scheme they pull off, with patience excluded from the equation, and as a result of that, Principal Hall is crafted as a malicious monster who only emerges from his office to prey on the kids of this school. Everyone’s fear of him is miscalculated.

However, now that I’m shuffling over to his office with a slip woven into my fingers which states that I’m an immoral person, that ginger beard of his is more like a trap in which to restrain me, that professionalism of his area is more like a deception, and that pen gripped in his hand is more like my future murder weapon. Now I understand why he’s feared. Maybe it’s just the paranoia.

Gathering the shards of my doubts before I begin my descent into hell, I knock frantically on the door until Principal Hall acknowledges me, invites me inside.

“Brendon,” he says, voice marinating in menace as it spills onto a file that he’s somehow selected without even knowing that I’d be here. “Please have a seat.”

I’ve barely seen Principal Hall and am now in his office, yet the man is less amazed than he should be for these circumstances. I’ve never so much as nicked the boundaries of the law, never cheated on a test, never sassed a teacher, and my file should disclose that.

I’ve been told that I’m a good kid, by many teachers and administrators and all the suburban parents at dinner parties, and it’s so unlike me to root myself in a principal’s gaze after acting up. It’s not so salient that I was being an upstander, like every video in middle school advisory classes directs you to be, because I overreacted and pushed a kid, despite the helpful intentions, and I’ll be punished for it.

Is it that this man doesn’t care about any of this, does he even know anything, or did he figure everyone ends up in his office at some point in their career?

Only wasting two seconds to ponder Principal Hall’s peculiar apathy, I dubiously slither into the seat, hands embracing each other and curling in every possible direction to fuel my anxiety of the verdict.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” Principal Hall notes, finally vocalizing what I had been wondering about.

“I make a point of never getting into trouble.”

“Yet here you are, but let’s not focus on that. Your objective was probably ethical, at least.” The man’s back tightens from a ruler of civility, diverting the subject. “So tell me what happened.”

A sigh of relief sags out of my lungs, doting on my new flexibility. Principal Hall has no idea what brought me to his office, what spiteful deed I plucked into existence that Mr. Way happened to detect, which means that I may depict my story however I like without it being discredited by the punitive sentence of a teacher — I opt for the truth.

“Yesterday I found Spencer Smith pinning Dallon Weekes — the new kid from France — to the lockers, but I dragged Dallon away before any more damage transpired.” I wrestle with my words, repeating them over and over in my head, but they never sound just right. “Then today...Spencer decided it would be hilarious to give Dallon a business card to a mental health organization, and yeah — maybe that doesn’t seem so pernicious, but he wasn’t seeking to help Dallon, rather tease the veritable struggles that may or may not pertain to him.”

Principal Hall is only somewhat lost, sympathizing with me and Dallon yet not quite comprehending why I’m in his office when Spencer was the actual perpetrator of the crime so far, but I continue.

“So in defense of my friend, I chased Spencer back and pushed him.”

Principal Hall doesn’t produce any sort of noise, only swivels to the phone and calls Mr. Way, whom he knows to be on lunch duty, to beckon Dallon and Spencer to his office.

Until the two arrive, our time is imbued with an awkward silence of tapping feet and fidgeting hands and sometimes creasing papers, but once the witnesses drift into the office, that silence is terminated.

Dallon’s face is flushed and restless, and it pains me to observe such panic tessellating his skin, for he did nothing wrong, nothing to deserve a trip to the principal’s office, nothing to ship this level of fuss to him, but he’s present in the stench of apple cinnamon air freshener anyway, while Spencer’s countenance is smug and just might induce something a bit stronger than a push, but Principal Hall speaks before it can.

“Brendon, I would like you to apologize to Spencer.”

If Spencer wasn’t arrogant before, he definitely is now, so my teeth are fettered in candid rage for him as I rise to mend something that isn’t in any need of being mended, with words so deceiving that it fools even the principal.

“I would like to formally apologize for pushing you.” Every hair on my head is as obdurate as possible, every ripple of emotion quelled so that I won’t unmask the smirk of someone who just succeeded in fooling those around them, and Spencer believes me, if only for this exact day, because everyone with a brain is aware that we will forever despise each other and tomorrow will reset the clock, so for now we’re suspended in an agreement.

Principal Hall nods to the alternate person in the room, not quite finished with us. “Now Spencer, you will apologize to Dallon.”

All ounces of Spencer’s cockiness are now but ghosts in the night, and it entails every dash of willpower not to beam at the bully’s fate. If Dallon is amused, he doesn’t show it, because unlike me he has at least a tad of respect for others and doesn’t hope to perpetuate any umbrage between him and Spencer — that, or he has something else planned.

“Dallon.” Spencer shoves the words out one at a time, like an industrial machine in a pretentiousness factory. “I’m sorry for being so rude to you.”

“It’s all right.” And he smiles — truly smiles, though that could perhaps be the precursor to his plan.

Principal Hall claps once to signal the cessation of this feud, and he grants us an escape from his office, but before we go, Dallon halts by Spencer and, flicking out the business card, leaves a parting gift with the bully. “You can have this. I’m sure your therapist needs it back.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I DON'T THINK YOU REALISE HOW FUCKING SAVAGE DALLON CAN BE OML
> 
> Quaimz: Apple or Microsoft?
> 
> Aimz: idek I feel like we should leave these to the misogynistic 12 year old gamer boys who write reviews for products at school (yes, I've seen this happen)
> 
> ~Dakapple


	18. this isn't fluff this is pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so while you're reading, please play "Cold" by Jorge Mendez  
> it will make this so much better because I'm shit at writing on my own  
> Here's a YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIE0PX1uXk

“Dallon, are you quite all right? Are you poorly?” I extend my hand to Dallon’s forehead, but he brushes it away and stabs his spoon into his melting mound of strawberry ice cream like he’s been doing for the past seven minutes to unsuccessfully assure me that he’s fine.

He is _not_ fine, and he hasn’t been ever since yesterday. He received his apology, his petty revenge, his fruit from the labors he manufactured, yet he is discontented with the dull reality of life and this fucking mall and everything around him, unfortunately including me.

“Don’t worry about me,” Dallon commands rather passively, face helplessly amorphous around his hands.

“But you look pretty fucking depressed, mate,” Kara states bluntly, her position just the same as Dallon’s but with more of a disappointment with her friend than her own gloom.

“Well I’m not, so can you please drop it?”

My sister’s demeanor veers from playfulness to a damage that Dallon can’t see, for his focus is centered in his food. “I’m going to the little ladies’ room,” Kara announces, banging the spoon against her cup and then just deciding to throw it away with the scrappy state of her ice cream. “Have fun with your existential crisis.”

Once Kara has departed, his vision on her the whole time to make sure that she’s left, he — like my sister had done — throws his spoon into his ice cream one last time to address me. “Have you ever thought about it?”

I shake my head, as if vocalizing a curt “no” out of silence, and Dallon is cued by the small attempt, the weak attempt at persisting through the hardships of what is to come.

“Have you ever thought about those emotional battle scenes in the rain from all the movies you’ve watched? How you’re holding on so tightly to your pillow as you pray for neither person fighting against the monster to die?”

Of all the things he could’ve discussed with me, he chooses a fight scene of a movie. Dallon Weekes is not a fighter, not in the slightest. He is an artist, a person who spectates from the sidelines with a paint brush grooming his fingers, the farthest thing away from someone who engages in a combat harmful to everyone who views it, yet I’ll allow anything in order for him to finally speak. His silence is like a razor blade to the heart, like the absence of color in a world that’s already colorless, like losing someone when you thought they would lose you first, and I suppose that’s what Dallon’s getting at.

“But maybe you’re not so concerned with them both dying, just how the other would respond, how the other would shriek chaos into the air like lightning in the storm of their hearts, of their distress, how the other would contemplate just giving up then and there, dying and dying without a cause that would be suitable to anyone else, because I’ll bet you they loved that other person. They loved them so much that they were willing to die when they saw the _other_ die, willing to mourn them in the few seconds of their remaining life, willing to strike themselves down to achieve the same destination as their friend, and you’re simply sitting on your couch like you care as much as they do, but you know that’s impossible to accomplish, because you understand how much they loved one another, and you understand how _they_ understood each other, and you understand that nothing you approach could ever amount to this, and through this all there’s still the real cause of you clutching your pillow so fervidly.”

Dallon is paused, teasing me and teasing a guess out of my fragile lungs, a guess that I can’t formulate, because I’m captivated by this all, by the sudden flow of tears sledding down my face, by the gravity of what Dallon is sharing.

He swallows dubiously. “It’s the uncertainty of whether or not that person will continue to fight after their true love is bound to the very thing confronting them, the very thing that could kill them and send them to their grave to be reunited with their lost lover, and you begin to wonder if anything in that protagonist’s life will ever mean as much as that familiar victim did, if anything is worth fighting for, if they will drop their weapons and surrender to that monster who slew the only thing that saved their heart from rock bottom, and when your tears cradle that pillow in moisture, your hands will forever be gripping them with the same intensity as before, because everything is on the line, and everything is distorted by the rain and the anguish it provokes, and everything is not as it seems, but you’re hoping. You’re hoping so fucking much that the protagonist will be able to pull through, will be able to salvage joy out of that bitter heart of theirs, will be able to fight back and survive like their lover never did, like their lover always wanted them to do.”

Dallon is calming down a bit, but each word vows a fluctuation in his stability, in his loyalty to proceed with this conversation, so to defend himself, he redirects where he starts. “The protagonist has known since the beginning that their lover would’ve begged them to continue fighting for them in their honor, in their memory, in the remembrance of how they tie their shoes or how they laugh or how their doubts gradually faded with the trust of the other, and they are aware that their love for their friend is rooted in unapologetic lullabies to one another in the darkness of night when they’re both shaking at the thought of their future, a future that one of them will never witness, and because of that it is the protagonist’s job, the protagonist’s _duty_ , to carry on through the ash.”

Dallon’s voice is brittle and nearing death, so gelled by tears that it’s a surprise that he can talk, but he does, and emotionally so. “Brendon...Brendon, if I’m gone, will you fight back? Will you slay that monster without me? Will you find it in yourself to forgive the deeds that brought you here and ended up killed me as a result? Will you forgive _yourself_?”

My hands shoot towards my companion with just enough time to coddle a falling tear, a last sign that he has never been a happy artist, that such an idea is impossible. “Dallon, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about this rain clouded sky, about this battle against the monster of life, about what you will sacrifice to remember that I love you and will always love you unconditionally, with no strings attached, with no apprehension, with no remorse, with nothing that could ever discredit who you are to me and what you’ve done to label you as the light of my life, and I want you to know that I, the lover, would’ve wanted you to fight back, would’ve wanted you to remember me, would’ve wanted you to call my name into the dense sky if you had to, and if you forget that for a moment, then you’ve already lost against the monster.”

I’m guessing the monster is myself in this situation. You can’t really hate yourself for being like this when it’s all you’ve ever known. But then again, maybe I should actually follow that advice, because despite my cognizance of that maxim, I still berate myself for not being perfect, for making common mistakes, for being the person fate molded me to be, and I still hate every time I pass by a mirror without even looking, because my virulence is so deep that the slightest mention of me is degraded automatically.

I should not be ashamed for being myself when there’s no other option, but I am, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, Dallon could save me from that, but we’re all glum in an ice cream shop, with him portraying the character who is murdered by the monster, and I recognize that the monster is me. So with that being said, my own forgiveness is far down the road, just as faith is far down his.

Similarly, there will always be that one person who begins a sentence with the phrase “imagine a world where,” and you’ll always laugh and say that the prospect is impossible. I never did. I had hope somewhere before all this stuff happened, and because of that hope, I developed unrealistic expectations for who I am and who I’m supposed to be, and finally the world got to me. It got to me, and now it won’t let go, and now _Dallon_ won’t let go while he claims that I won’t let go of _him_ , and we’re devastated.

We’re no longer that hot mess in purple. We’re just a mess, plain and simple, a mess who can’t control their emotions, a mess who relies on pills to grasp what they desire, a mess who doesn’t listen to other people, no matter if what they preach is productive to us. We’re self-centered, we’re insolent, we’re hectic, and we’re lost. We’re those children you read about in pamphlets at the doctor’s office with the title of teen angst at the top, except that teen angst is permanent and will stake our hearts with plague and eventually another dreary funeral people will be forced to observe in lifetimes that span farther than ours ever will, and we’re okay with that, because other people’s triumphs aren’t crucial to us when we’re six feet under where even a blade of grass cannot breathe. We’ve discarded so much confidence in the world that I describe the perished as “we” instead of the singularity I knew Dallon would become, and perhaps it indicates that I’m not going to fight back. I am going to burn in the flames, and a deceased Dallon will never know a thing about it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'M FUCKING SOBBING OH MY GOD
> 
> Quwying: did you actually listen to the music I suggested?
> 
> Aying: I listened to it while both writing and reading and this is why I'm crying
> 
> ~DaKILL-ME-NOW


	19. I'm a rat ass punk who can't be trusted

“Dallon!” My backpack tumbles onto the floor, disregarding any of its precious items stowed away inside of it; there are more important topics about which to worry, primarily why my friend abandoned me at school in the middle of the day, and without a warning, too. “Dallon, where are you?”

Dallon departed early from school to go who knows where, and it’s not like I could’ve halted him, as his math class is different from mine, and that’s the last time I would’ve been able to spot him, and I’m sure even if I _did_ spot him that he would push me away and tell me to mind my own business, that my interest in his welfare is annoying and intrusive and impertinent to his goal of overdosing at some point, but not once do I think to myself that my duty to help him is any of those things, because I love him with every ounce of energy I possess, and those irrational words will not stop me from protecting the only person who will favor me until the end.

Not even Kara has supported me as much as Dallon has, despite being the singular sister who has stuck around (though that’s mainly because she’s only thirteen and isn’t legally permitted to move elsewhere), and it was Dallon who lifted me from the never ending abyss and reassured me that I would be okay, and I should’ve recognized that I never considered if _he_ would be okay.

And now I don’t know where the hell he is or which places he enjoys spending time at, because he did everything with me and me alone and was always contented with that, and he wasn’t a mindless being, no. He displayed emotions, and those emotions are the subjects burying me in confusion at this moment, because everything in this house is strange and warped and detached from my childhood albeit it was there to witness it, and nothing makes sense.

The only audible noise I can detect is the faint puffing of air, the hitching breaths, the creaking of a chair as it contains a slouched posture of someone who has lost the fight against the monster, the only time where I question if I’m that creature who afflicts him, but I know deep inside me that I’m probably part of the equation.

When I do find him, it’s in the living room, huddled over nothing but his own woes, trembling at the thoughts that have become restless when Dallon was sure that I couldn’t see him, but I can, and it’s a ghastly sight. It’s like pinching your nose at the stench of decay. It’s like observing as he constructs his own coffin. It’s like viewing a corpse preparing himself for burial because no one else bothered to help him. And it’s terrifying.

“Dallon,” I whisper, bent around the door frame, and when he beholds me there’s a sickening gleam in his eyes as if he’s fixed on murder, but the only murder is for himself. “Dallon, what are you doing?”

“Outwardly expressing what I’ve been doing inside for years.”

And that just proves that he is not only far from the happy artist, but he has _never_ been close to that title. He has _never_ judged himself as a person to be hallowed. He has _never_ wanted to survive until adulthood with the state of his life. He has _never_ wanted to persist in a world where it doesn’t pay off in the end. He has _never_ thought of me before doing something as reckless as this, and this signals that he has _never_ been afraid to die.

I rush over to my decomposing friend, hurling a hand over his back about which Dallon tacitly protests by gearing his bones under his skin, but I don’t allow it to repel me from assisting him. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“There comes a point where you think, why don’t I just overdose? Why don’t I just kill myself? And I’ll give you one simple answer to that: because drugs taste bad, and a gun is too messy, and all the odds are stacked up against you to pander to your fear of harm, like you haven’t been harming yourself for years already, and there’s a certain desperation to be exhumed from that. This is it. _This_ is what you get. _This_ is what it’s like to be insane.” Dallon’s laughing. He’s freaking laughing at what has become of him, at what horrors he’s written, at the pain he’s shoving into my heart a billion needles at a time without so much as an apology.

Dallon should be sorry for ruining me like this, but he isn’t, because all he cares about is those fucking placebo pills that perhaps aren’t as placebo as he claims they are, and you would’ve suspected that their absence from his life would be a positive, but he’s still crying on the floor for his life to be stolen from him, and he’ll most likely accept it in any form.

Apparently his self-hatred isn’t enough. Apparently his placebo pills can’t evoke emotions similar to dousing himself in real drugs. Apparently he’s completely fine with watching me suffer before he completes the action I now know he strives to accomplish, but _I’m_ not okay with suffering. Suffering is _not_ mankind’s way of enthusing the happiness when it finally comes, because there _is_ no happiness where there is no Dallon Weekes.

“You can’t do this, Dallon. You…” The devil is crawling up my throat with a dagger to any words I could’ve possibly enunciated, any words that could’ve possibly saved Dallon. “You’re irreplaceable to me.”

Those bluebird eyes of his are sublime with colors I have never encountered before, every blade of anger melting into volatile hues and volatile shapes, into a disparity between this ghost and the real Dallon Weekes, and he is now only a shell with phrases to guard him. “I don’t think people understand that when they say every single human being is irreplaceable, it doesn’t mean a thing. Some of us wouldn’t mind being replaced. Some of us need that replacement to soothe the petty minds of our families so they think they never lost anything at all, because although we have always deemed ourselves as nothing, other people haven’t, and they’re so fucking foolish for that. _You’re_ so foolish for that, Brendon.”

“Screw you,” I seethe, clambering away from the man who has mutilated himself into something that I can’t even recognize, something that merely _looks_ like the person I love. “You made me care, and now you hate me for it.”

A sigh traipses from Dallon’s lungs, revising his approach to this conversation, because there’s a slim portion of him that still adores me — perhaps very slim. “I do not hate you, Brendon.”

“It sure seems like it.”

“If you want, I’ll contemplate staying alive if I may have my pills.” Dallon drafts his contract calmly, lids sealed against my fury.

Leaning towards him, I communicate my terms. “No.”

Dallon’s serenity flees for spite in the notion that I will never agree to guidelines meant to kill him, meant to turn his existence upside down and strangle him on unfamiliar boundaries, but he’s upset with me nevertheless, and he intends to clarify that. “Do you know how disappointed I was when I found out the side effects of a calcium carbonate overdose? I then realized the only way to go painlessly was to fucking shoot myself, but the only pistol I retained was my mind. So here I am, Brendon, and I’m dying from my own brain, and if you don’t like me taking these pills, then you should ask yourself if you really care about ending my suffering.”

I do care. I care so fucking much that my tears are the only things I feel on my face — not the usual twitch of lashes upon my cheeks, not the occasional discomfort of skin, not any of it, only my anguish and fear and crumbling, only the premonition that we will never be the same.

But I’m trying, and I’m trying with everything I reserve. I’m ambling towards him, and I’m embracing his fragile body. I’m threading my lips to his, and I’m never releasing him. I’m vowing that we will never be who we were a week ago, but we can replicate something better through the agony we’ve endured together.

It is not the warm honey sensation as before, and I predicted that. It is the bitterness of decay. It is the heartbreak of what is to come. It is the tears we shed here and the tears we shed later. It is the knowledge that Dallon has painted tragedy so often that he has begun to crave it for himself, and it is falling back in love with a clearer image of our last goodbye.

“ _Je n’aime que toi_ ,” my companion promises through the fraudulence, sketching a fraudulence himself.

“If you really love me, then don’t do this.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘ _toujours, mon chéri_.” He’s diverting the subject to what _I_ should do, not what he _shouldn’t_ do, such as kill himself, and I’ll elucidate that to him.

“How can I love you forever if you won’t even stay alive?”

He peels away from me, hands cupping my face to deliver his final verdict. “You remember me, and you fight back against the monster.”  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: WHO WANTS TO KILL ME??? :')
> 
> Quong: did you cry?
> 
> Aong: no, because i'm emotionally detached, but I cried on the inside
> 
> ~DakoTOUCH-ME-AGAIN-AND-I-FIGHT-U


	20. hit me with a brick

Night terrors. I’ve experienced some of them before, mostly in middle school, when my mind was hell bent on torturing me both in sleep and in reality. Kara preferred to stay away from that topic, (even though my unconscious screams were occupying all the space in her head), which is probably because she knew I’d never share what was plaguing me, let alone the details of the dream. I don’t blame her; I can be _very_ stubborn.

I didn’t ever suspect that Dallon would be the type for nightmares, as he seems irreversibly chained to actuality and never one to doubt his surroundings, the closest he gets to losing himself being the art that he throws at the canvas in bright colors and sometimes darker ones when the weather is taunting, and to think that his wails are scraping the walls without salvation is the most ghastly thing.

I want to help him — I really do — but I’m not sure if nudging a person drowning in a night terror is completely safe, and I’d rather not risk Dallon’s security just to soothe the guilty conscience that dictates that this is all my fault for whatever peculiar reason, because maybe this yelping is a result of what I said to Dallon this afternoon, and this might have been both of our faults, so I could’ve been concerned with night terrors, but I’m too awake and grieving to witness them.

Besides, I’ve encountered enough from middle school with that alarming disease of the bullies, so I suppose it’s logical that my “night terror glands” have shrivelled up into disfunction and now only demand that I stay awake to observe the spontaneity of _others’_ “night terror glands”.

Dallon’s screams aren’t like others, though, his “night terror glands” just as disparate yet more alive than anyone I’ve seen, more alive than a rabbit born in springtime within the cradle of fresh grass, but his screams aren’t as adorable as such a rabbit. His screams are like knives ripping through your ears, like nails on a chalkboard, like the irreversible pounding of blood in your head, all of it shouting at the same time over and over with chalky singing and screeching violins that never leave you, never unchain you.

I decide finally to console the shrieking man after bursting through my apprehension, though warily and with a quivering hand extending towards his shoulder to rouse him from his sleep, his dark and terrible sleep, the sleep that will remain a daunting legend to me because I know for a fact that Dallon will never exchange the details of it with the person who was forced to meet it in return for my simple action of saving him from that harrowing dream.

I spaghettify my arm to gingerly tap my troubled friend, and he jolts awake with every sunset of fire smoking in his irises, every horror movie villain cackling at him still, every urge to fling myself over him until he’s damp with my tears yelling at me to do it, but I refrain from anything of the sort. For now.

“W-was that a dream?”

“Yes, but it’s over now.” Now is the time at which I thaw into his arms, partially accompanied by a smile and partially accompanied by the melancholy job of H2O, about whom Dallon is utterly bewildered, but he eventually joins me in a kiss and forgets the events of last night.

~~~~~

In the morning, Dallon appears as well as he can be in comparison to his other days, such as yesterday afternoon and last night, and the natural lamp of the sun being filtered by the blinds illuminates every fiber of his raven locks and bestows upon him the gift of supernatural beauty where I already see it but is now present to everyone else in a sanely corporal form so that they may glance back at me and exclaim that I was correct about my views of him. Of course I detected it from the genesis of this friendship, and, smiling broadly from the middle of the stairs, I know it is henceforth true for everyone.

Rushing down the stairs upon seeing my friend, I twine my arms around him to spin this collection around in the air, hair ruffling under the pressure of measly oxygen. “Hey, Dallon,” I greet with a grin the size of a mountain coagulating on my lips, but that smile is immediately snuffed out at the sight of what’s lurking on the counter. “Dallon, what is that?”

He laughs nervously while shuffling to cover the items strewn about the granite, but what’s done is done, and what’s seen is seen, and my judgment is convicting. “You always ask that question.” He’s stalling but stalling poorly. Anyone could see through this veneer, so inept from allowing the dust to settle over it like an old photograph of the veritable man whom he used to wear, the veritable man who has been shed to the floor like the stray pills that also reside on the counter and swallow the conversation in deceit.

Mr. Armstrong confiscated his medicine. That should've been the last of it, but here Dallon is, downing some more pills in the vast openness of my kitchen and pretending like it’s a miracle that he was caught. He swore that the first set of pills were placebo, nothing more and nothing less, but what about these? After last night, hesitance is my first priority, and it’s launching javelins of dread into my stomach.

“Dallon, I thought I told you that taking these pills would be bad for you.” Unwelcomed tears now welcome _themselves_ into my eyes without a proper warrant to remind me that I’m a wretched human being undeserving of emotional stability, undeserving of someone who will listen to my burdens instead of cower away like Dallon is.

“ _Love_ is bad for you when you retain the knowledge that all it ever does is end in heartbreak, but we still try, and why is that? Because it makes us feel great. It makes us feel as though we aren’t tormenting our bodies, so really what’s the difference between love and pills?”

I shake my head, unwilling to answer, unwilling to submit my struggles towards keeping Dallon alive to this faulty comparison of his, so he continues, frustrated, without me.

“Love is good, and pills are bad, right? However, the chemicals for love and the chemicals for obsessive-compulsive disorder are identical, yet one is beautiful, and the other is torturous.” Dallon turns from me, grips his glass to channel his anger to the water and to his voice, where it hums flatly on wilting plains. “So you must then ask yourself if what I’m doing personally is so much worse than what we’re doing together.”

“You regret meeting me?” My brows interlace, stricken by the connotations of Dallon’s words.

He is not as vulnerable as I am, his tone bathing in the granite upon which his pills lie in deception. “I regret you thinking that I can’t handle myself.”

And I suppose that’s fair.

~~~~~

The trip to school on our dinky old bus is coated in silence, coated in anxiety, coated in curiosity at what Dallon is doing on that sheet of paper supported against his binder, because it sure as hell isn’t drawing from the type of strokes he’s caressing into the paper, more like the rare handwriting of a letter, but he hasn’t dropped the names of any friends, whether they’re American or from back home in France, though he’s much like a loner, stereotypes and all, so confiding me is off the table, but Kara loves to remind me that I’m stubborn as hell, therefore I’ll test my luck.

“Dallon, what are you doing?” I slant towards him with an expression of eagerness lacquering my face, but Dallon is not so joyous — he hides his paper from me. “Dallon?”

“What the hell do you want, Brendon?” my friend barks, furling the edge of his paper within his rope of a fist.

Disparaged by his comment, I shrink back into my boundaries. “I just wanted to know what you’re writing.”

Dallon swivels towards me, though not with the answers I hoped for. “Humans are so freaking nosey, you know that?”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” The moment the apology snaps my mouth like a rubber band, I focus on the scenery outside the window, my peripheral vision the only thing to rescue me from total ignorance, the total ignorance for which Dallon shames people, and he’s shamed me enough for any more occasions to be fulfilling to either of us.

Astonishingly, Dallon looks _sorry_ for what he said to me, but that remorse is only temporary, preserving itself for as long as it takes to remember that he loves me unconditionally but cannot tolerate my desire to “command” him. On the contrary, I _don’t_ desire for Dallon to be in agony because he pities my lack of faith in the notion that he actually _does_ love me, as I know that, if only a bit, and even through this haze of shittiness, I can distinguish that we still kiss and touch and laugh together, though only in privacy, and that’s enough for me.

Maybe I’m just confused, and maybe I’m just addicted to the morphine that’s laced up in the same basket as confusion, and yes, it’s horrible that morphine is what discovered the placebo effect of which I’m so distrustful, but both the morphine and the placebo effect are parts of Dallon equally as much as I am, so all four of us are smoldering in hell together. I know that dying is merely a stage of a human’s instinctive cycle, that it is unavoidable, inevitable, powerful over us mortals, and I know that Dallon’s just attempting to speed up the process, but it’s all jumbling my thoughts, because on one hand, Dallon is promising me that he’s perfectly fine and is only experimenting, but on the other hand, he was fucking shaking in my living room because he couldn’t endure either the medication withdrawal symptoms or the nature that ushered him towards the pills in the first place.

You know how your nose becomes raw after you wipe it away from a cold? It’s like that. When you try to help yourself, you get burnt, and that’s actually a plausible piece of advice, because chances are what you think is helping yourself is actually not so productive, and Dallon has yet to realize this. Do not respect yourself if you do not know how, because you’ll dig a deeper grave than you were already in, and you’ll then _dis_ respect yourself, and Dallon has been fooled by this trickery many times while he doused himself in art and paint and all things he considers holy in the most atheistic way, and I can only hope that the letter he’s writing is one to the world to apologize for being the heinous creature I know he’s not.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: remember when someone on peroxide told me to go to hell but I was already there? yeh, basically this is what I'm enduring rn I hope you're happy for daily updates because I force myself to write them
> 
> Queptysis: do you still ship brendon and dallon in this story
> 
> Aptysis: I want this to work out, but then again...look at what I've done ???? honestly you're all dead ????
> 
> ~DaCRYING-IN-HELL


	21. could this get any worse honestly

“Fix yourself,” I demand out of the blue, seemingly out of the depths of my brain where no one dares to dwell for fear of destruction by thoughts that lie and cheat and scam with no viable motive, only weaned by a reaction.

Fixing himself is precisely what Dallon needs to rescue him from the deep, dark abyss of his demons, because he’s been immersed in a misconception about them. Demons are not creatures with soot-stained skin and irises that drip of crimson — no, they are much more familiar than that. They are the monster you witness by briefly darting your vision to the mirror before shying away, embarrassed. They are the ticks you can’t be rid of no matter how hard you try, because they will always be counting sonnets upon your leg without rest. They are the planters of ideas in your head that say you’re safe from the dark because you don’t give a shit if you’re snatched but never recognizing that such a plea for death is a demon itself. They are in the traditional things, like meticulously ordering shoes in a line and enjoying the bite of a rubber band upon your wrist and patting the hellhounds that’ll kill you just to hasten the process of their labor. They are as real as you and me, and I know that Dallon has seen them, too.

However, he denies it with this pardoning: “Excuse me?”

“Fix yourself,” I repeat, this time stronger than my heart could ever be.

“I can’t!” He’s more frustrated than angry, really, so I interpret that as a sign to continue prying.

“ _I said_ fix yourself.”

“Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been trying to do?” Tears deify the shear pain in his eyes, so blue and so estranged and so irreversible. “Don’t you think that’s what the placebo pills are for? I need a schedule in my life, Brendon, a routine to assert that there’s something I’m compelled to do every day instead of withering like an old man clothed in a seventeen year-old’s body that’s rapidly deteriorating to show what he truly is on the inside, and I don’t want people to see that, most of all you, because you’ve been with me since the beginning, and my own peevishness is shoving you away. I don’t want that, Brendon — I don’t — but I _do_ want you to believe me when I say that you are the best thing I’ve ever stumbled upon.”

“Then what have we come to? What, after we endeavored to break free of our shackles, do we make of ourselves? What are we now?”

“ _Un coup de foudre_ ,” Dallon concludes without missing a beat. “A strike of lightning, or, if you prefer, love at first sight. I believe that is what we are, and what others believe is that love at first sight is either one of many fantasies of a six year-old, or it’s an unsustainable wish that’s just as fleeting as human intrigue, that falling in love solely by sight is conditioning you to never expect how you fall _out_ of love after you realize that maybe this won’t work out, and that maybe you’re more different than you had once thought, and that maybe a strike of lightning is a harm instead of a blessing, so all I’m doing is figuring out how to cushion the blow.”

I cross my arms, proposing a challenge. “How are you going to do that?”

And without a word, Dallon is gripping his jacket with knuckles soaking in Everest snow, then pouring through the door and into the concrete border of the road, and it’s all I can do to follow.

“You better not be leaving me,” I scold him, paced at the intensity of an exasperated suburban mother.

Dallon doesn’t spin around, rather speaking against the wind and hoping that it’ll carry towards me. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m an important person to you, and important people aren’t usually abandoned for fucking pills, placebo or not.”

This time he does spin around, marching towards me and jabbing a spear into my chest with his finger. “Don’t trick yourself into thinking that you are even remotely important, because you’re just an ordinary person. _I’m_ just an ordinary person. You’re only art because _everything_ is — everything is beautiful, everything is destructive, and everything is just completely and utterly ordinary, and that’s all it’ll ever be. That’s all _you’ll_ ever be.” My friend’s foot punches the sidewalk as he turns, as he deserts me.

“Dallon, stop pushing me away from you! I’m just trying to help!”

“No, you’re trying to shove a gag in my mouth with the claim that you’re only someone who cares about me, just completing what you’re meant to do because you’re somehow my friend after all of this, but if you truly consider yourself my friend, don’t act as though controlling me is the best for my health. I know who I am, and I know what I want, and sometimes what I want isn’t to stay alive, but you have no right to decide what I do with my life, however limited it is.”

“Killing yourself shouldn’t be on the market.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Dallon agrees, halted by the gravity of his burdens. “And I wanted to tell those pills that the bruises on my hips were from the tiny swing set in the backyard of my home in France, not from them, but that would be a lie, because every purple and every black were their rigid fingers on me, instructing me not to utter a sound, because this was supposed to be art, right? This was supposed to be art.” Dallon has now returned and is leashed to my hands as if uttering his vows at a wedding that’ll never transpire with the state of things, and as a tear from his very own eyes splotches my skin, all he feels is shame.

“But then I realized that only _you_ are art, Brendon, and I’m losing you faster than I met you, and art is meant to be cherished, but I’m doing a pretty shitty job of cherishing it, because I can see that your tears are burning your skin so fucking much, and you somehow regard _me_ as art, though I’m far from that. I am sordid, I am the scum of the earth, and I am worthless, yet you’re still here telling me that I shouldn’t get on with it and kill both my body and mind, that I shouldn’t think of myself as what I truly am, that I’m _better_ than this, as if this isn’t what I want for my life like you want a new pair of shoes or another friend or someone to remind you that you’re not in this alone, but let me tell you something, Brendon: you are, because I can’t fucking take it anymore. I can’t pretend that I’m all right, ‘cause I’m not. I’m fucking sick in the head, and soon that’ll all be over. You can return to your life where you can act as though I never painted that apple on the back alley or kissed you with paint chemicals on my lips or promised that I would’ve wanted you to fight, because maybe fighting isn’t so attainable anymore. Maybe you’ll destroy yourself over me, and because of that maybe I’ll regret doing this, but you instructed me to never be sorry for helping myself. This is only a part of that, nothing more.” My companion nods with the largest surge of self assurance he can muster, still ambivalent about his opinion, and he should be. I’m not a stranger to him, though I might become one soon, might become the ghost whom I continuously fear draping its skins of invisibility over me like I was never a person at all, like I’ve willingly surrendered the thing I loved the very most.

“Dallon, what the hell are you talking about?” My hands are shaking now, earthquakes upon earthquakes rupturing my bones and tendons and everything that comprises my body, but it’s false, prosthetic, dirty as wearing someone else’s name, wearing a the badge of a ghost that stole my identity. “You’re scaring me, Dallon.”

Latching his fingers onto my hands I suspect for the last time in a while, Dallon’s gaze beatifies me with true purity amidst the situation, as if departing from his lover to enlist in a war, a war no one realized would be against his own mind. “Then find it in your heart to be brave.”

Upon turning his back and jogging as quickly as possible away from me, away from his doubts, away from my ostensible control over him, away from everything that corrupts him, all I can do is yell one final thing to the shadow he’s fading into: “Dallon, where are you going?”

He stops for a moment, glancing back as lovers do, and delivers his reply. “Some destination where I could never possibly hurt you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: LOOOOOOLLLLL CAN YOU IMAGINE NOT KNOWING WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AND GETTING HIT WITH THIS SHITSTORM LMAO I ALMOST FEEL BAD FOR THE READERS
> 
> Quwingaling: Do you have a crush on someone?
> 
> Angalang: when people ask their viewers this, it's usually because they're head over heels in love with someone, but really I'm just curious as an asocial person myself how you could actually interact with people like wtf how (also I have a hard time distinguishing platonic relations and romantic relations for some people so idk)
> 
> ~Dacranky


	22. I love my readers but my readers do not love me

I shouldn’t have allowed Dallon to leave me in the street like that, but I did, and now the regrets are flooding in with the momentum of a raging deluge. Why did I do it? Why didn’t I realize my mistake sooner? Why did any of this even happen in the first place?

It would’ve been so _simple_ just to run back over to him and spin his departing body around towards me, kiss him tenderly, forcibly remind that fool of a man that I love him and will never stop loving him for as long as I live, because even if _he_ doesn’t live for much longer, that will not dampen my adoration for him. I know he hasn’t been living ever since he dangerously medicated himself with “placebo” pills, so perhaps it’s not much different from his normal style of existing, and while it’s tragic, it’s not like I’m affected as thoroughly as _he_ was previously affected by chemicals he doesn’t understand.

This is science, and though psychology is closely laced within a web of subtopics, it isn’t the same as comprehending what these pills will do to a human body, a fragile layer of meat atop organs and bones and everything of the like, because Dallon isn’t a doctor and never plans to be, yet he purports a higher knowledge of what he’s shoving down his throat as if he’s a medical professional. Maybe this is pretentiousness, and maybe it’s not, but it’s definitely destructive.

With all of these thoughts and doubts and demons buzzing through my head without granting me a reason as to why they’re so prevalent in a space I presumed I could call my own, the only plausible response is to telephone the person I started this adventure with, the person that never left me like Dallon did, the person who’s so annoying at times yet just what I need currently: George Ryan Ross III.

Fumbling for my phone is the easy part, though not easy enough, as it’s buried who knows where under a pile of clothes and papers and random objects from school carnivals that happened to be flung over it like rocky waves in the storm that is my life right now, and it orders four minutes and fifty-seven seconds for me to eventually find it tucked away under my bed by my foot.

Truth is, it would’ve stayed there until I demanded its presence to call for takeout or something, because I haven’t needed it lately with the company of Dallon, and it’s becoming rarer and rarer by the day with each activity we spend together in some park or ice cream shop or neighborhood street with a skeptical Homeowner’s Association glaring at us, though now that Dallon has gone to a location unspecified, my phone is the item he’s distributed to me.

Now that we’ve shoved the easy part to the left, it’s time to dial Ryan’s number and doom myself to the anxiety before, during, and after his visit to discuss why it was that Dallon was so reckless and so unthoughtful and so intractable, and we haven’t even reached that point yet. so it just proves that all I do is worry about life and worry about Dallon and even worry about my worrying, and I absolutely abhor conversing about it, so I stow away my fear for the time being and lift my phone to my ear to greet Ryan.

“Hey, Brendon,” he says first, partially soothing my jittering hands.

I supply a much more prolonged period before I respond, still nervous about what I’m going to say and why I’m going to say it. “Um...hey, Ryan. Could you come over please?”

“Sure.” A pause, then filled with: “What do you need me over for?”

“You’ll see when you get there. Just come quickly.” My mouth skews, distorting even my words, so I hang up promptly and fold into the doorway, relieved that I’ve overcome one of many obstacles arising from this situation.

Just as I expected, paranoia zips a blanket of spite over my frail body, over my frail body that was ditched as an inferior option to pills, an option unsuccessful in what I aspired to achieve, which was to keep Dallon around me, to keep him smiling, to keep him the Dallon Weekes I once knew to be that beautiful psychology nerd, not the mess of a person who only believes that our strike of lightning will be the force to destroy us in the aftermath, that our strike of lightning was somehow a mistake despite harvesting a joy I didn’t know I reserved from the depths of my heart and clarifying that I have potential to utilize it to my advantage, potential to change my life for the better.

Even after discovering this ember in myself, I hate thinking about its effects on me, if any, so to escape the existential horrors of this, I dash downstairs to intercept Ryan when he arrives, which is approximately seven minutes and forty-two seconds after I entirely descend the steps with lead constantly burdening my feet with its ruthless power, slandering me for my weakness and tears and solace in other people’s comforting latency in places near me, in places that are constructed from my own terms.

When I answer the door, Ryan is in shambles, frazzled so much by the fact that I merely called him with a tone that suggested an emergency, which it certainly is, but it’s oddly heartening to see that he’s approaching this conversation with a ready supply of sympathy.

“Brendon,” my only remaining friend whispers, sided with a stream of air that powders his words in thinness. He scuttles inside, shrouding me with his arms directly after he pounces upon the far too Christian welcome mat and guiding me towards the a chair at the kitchen table like he’s some suburban woman reassuring a grieving grandmother advancing towards her own death, and it is only then that Ryan permits me to speak.

“It’s Dallon.”

“Yeah, I noticed he isn’t here.” Ryan glances around hastily, then settling back on me. “You’re always with him, anyway.”

I meet his gaze. “He’s gone.”

Ryan’s eyes punch out of their sockets like rotting corpses from their graves, devoured by an acute spate of fear. “Did he...did he kill himself?” Even through his concern, a peculiar expression is still pandemic across his milky visage, an expression of closure, because I’m fairly certain that everyone knew Dallon would do something like this eventually, and their suspicions have now been confirmed (sort of).

Waving that assumption away, I say, “No, he’s not dead. He’s just…” A sigh barbs my lungs in chaos, grappling for the correct words to convey that my friend isn’t in the grave but might as well be, and I make do. “He left me for whatever stupid reason, and he won’t reply to my texts telling him to get his sorry ass back here and apologize to himself for this torture he’s lying upon himself, because I sure as hell won’t do it for him.”

“I guess he never really was all that okay in the head, if you know what I mean, but it looked like he could handle himself, you know? I couldn’t imagine him doing this, especially to you. You really love each other, yeah?”

I nod, controlled by the puppet strings of melancholy and lamentation wrapped together in a cohesive fiber with a contract on me that’s just as cohesive as their mastery is, and within the silence Ryan procures his cell phone to call someone as if hunting for gossip and spreading it like a plague, though the only plague is me.

Ryan’s wrist tilts to accommodate the weight of his phone, likening to a stereotypical teenage girl with ribbons in her hair and pep in her heart. “Should I, like, phone the police or something?”

The edge of my hand is now mortaring my sealed lids, tired not from a lack of coffee but from the tumult of this situation. “No, I don’t need them getting caught up in this.”

“Brendon, this is a serious event!” Ryan’s brows refract towards higher plains of his forehead, beseeching me to act upon the turmoil. “You can’t just let it slip past you because you’re scared!”

“There’s no use in calling them, because Dallon will be back soon enough.” I shrug, but Ryan isn’t so convinced.

“And what if he isn’t? What if he actually wants to vanish out of your sight?”

“Then I’ll know that I wasn’t the best person for him, and that’s okay. I’ll be depressed, yeah, because _anyone_ would be depressed with these circumstances, but Dallon is more depressed than I ever was or could ever be, so I don’t want to trouble him any longer with the personality that has harmed him since the beginning.”

And Ryan just huffs, because he wasn’t as familiar with Dallon as I was, and he’ll simply never understand what I do. That’s fine, though. I don’t expect him to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: lmao this chapter was supposed to be more emotional but whatever I hate writing so much
> 
> Quatatouille: what weird routine do you have?
> 
> Atatouille: I FORCE MYSELF TO WRITE A CHAPTER OF THIS FUCKING STORY EVERY DAY AND EACH CHAPTER HAS TO BE AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FUCKING WORDS AND I HATE WRITING SO MUCH BUT I DO IT UGHGHGHEKHAE;HOEGW
> 
> ~Dakwriter


	23. homophobia is gay

“It’s all right. You’re all right.” A lie. A straight up, bloody lie that’s as flimsy as a measly old sheet of paper.

Ryan usually doesn’t like to lie, instead preferring to blatantly showcase what horrors he’s accomplished in both high school and in my neighborhood where he knows the residents can’t identify him yet still unfortunately link the scoundrel to me, proving to be quite consequential, and it’s paying off for him so far, having yet to be caught by the haunting Principal Hall by some mythical luck, some mythical power of Ryan Ross, and he’s continued to pull pranks on every person he stumbles upon.

On one rainy day in fifth grade, he decided it would be a sound idea to classically condition the people in his advisory by tapping his pencil on the edge of his desk seven times right before the bell rings for third period, and it is through Ryan’s impeccable motivation that he perpetuated this psychological discovery against his class to the point where he considered his work to be enough to test out how it operated, at which time he tapped his pencil on his desk seven times but earlier than his original mark on the clock, and many of the students responded by packing up their papers prematurely, and while I watched Ryan, knowing full well what he was doing, all I saw was that wide smirk poised towards our teacher’s utter bewilderment, and that’s definitely not the strangest thing he’s achieved. Not even close, but now something that is perhaps stranger than that is the fact that he’s lying to me by telling me that I’ll survive this restless fucking panic attack, which I won’t, but it’s nice to see Ryan attempt to save me from the flames of my own heart, a heart that’s engaging a war against me while simultaneously endeavoring to convince me that it’s not.

I’ve trudged through a panic attack before, many of them without a warning or a diagnosis of anxiety, because I’m persuaded that I don’t have it (it’s improbable, to say the least), yet I’ve driven through the symptoms, the dripping palms, the heart palpitations of a kick drum, a voice chipped by an earthquake, all of it concomitantly berating me for not being fortified enough to sustain my life.

But on this occasion, it’s just me and my thoughts, me and my demons, me and my ruthless nerves that won’t ever stop brandishing swords that they locate in my own hands to remind me that it’s just myself doing this, just myself to blame, just myself wasting Ryan’s time by hiring him to calm me down, guide me through this, and I can recognize that he’s trying, and he’s trying well, but I’m so fucking disorganized, so drowned in the sea, that I’m not sure if I can ever be consoled, especially not after the loss of someone with whom I’ve vigorously spent my past week and don’t know how to carry on without, because we’ve always been together with each possibly illegal excursion, all of them and more, and now that Dallon Weekes, the one person who was always there for me, has deserted someone I thought he loved just as much as I love him, and what is to make of me now? What am I anymore? Why have I trained myself to feed off of his existence like I’ve recently contracted Stockholm Syndrome, like I’ve recently contracted Stockholm Syndrome and no one gives a care?

Because no one ever did, and it is from the pain this affliction birthed that Dallon found himself in an unavoidable pitfall, in a dark tunnel, in a hollow abyss, the same hollow abyss he rescued me from, and it’s terribly ironic that it had to be this way. It’s as though he recovered me from the void, beheld me only for a moment, and relinquished his balance to dive into the darkness, and it’s as though I had no idea that this was transpiring so close to me.

I never do, because I’m ignorant and selfish and completely unaware of what’s around my body in a replacement of what’s around my mind, and that’s chains, plain and simple. Chains. Chains constricting my thoughts, my affected actions, my outlook on life, everything that comprises my brain in a neat little goody bag of terror and pandemonium, of not being quite positive on whether or not my counting has become a natural, healthy reflex or the curse of an inescapable obsession, of feeling unsafe around people due to the paranoia of how they’ll rather react to _me_ ; it has nothing to do with them, no correlation whatsoever, and that’s because no character of my brain is logical in any way, shape, or form, and I’ve regrettably just accepted that as a doctrine like it’s the only medicine to cure me.

Dallon already has his medicine where he likes it, has nestled it adeptly into his brain and allowed it to speak for him in claiming that they’re placebo pills when they’re more familiar to nocebo and all of its monstrous effects, but now he’s gone to some undisclosed area, and I’ll bet he’s still with those creatures, acquiescing them to wreak havoc on his limited expanse of a life while they permit no information to me, who’s back here in Las Vegas, in Palo Verde High School, in the bathroom with a Ryan Ross who’s trying to help me but can’t, and this is all I have now. This is my reality.

“I, uh, I’ve never seen a panic attack before,” Ryan admits in the hopes of breaking the ice, but all it does is educate me on the fact that he has no clue what he’s doing or what he’s supposed to be doing, and that he is cognizant of this and is willing to smolder with me because of his impenetrable pity for this anecdote. Typical of him.

I shrug, the best I can extracate for the tiring circumstances. “Just, like, help me breathe or something.”

“How do I help you breathe?” Ryan exclaims, ogling me like I’m a complicated furniture assembly manual. “They’re _your_ lungs, not mine.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“Yeah, I guess.” A break. “But still, how do I help you breathe?”

“Just make certain that _I_ remember to breathe.”

Ryan nods slowly, studying me in silence and suddenly sparking my anxiety back to life with a sharp “Breathe, Brendon!”

“That’s not helping!” I negate, and Ryan apologizes only in his body language of springing slightly away from me for fear that I’ll reprimand him for being so clueless, which I might, if this oblivious behavior proceeds without a proper cessation...or oxygen, in which case I’ll asphyxiate, and Ryan will be even more lost than before. Notice that this is the man who, at age seven, once phoned the police to say that his house was too warm and that he wanted them to cool it down, so trust in his abilities is off the table, most likely for all of eternity.

I don’t think he’ll mind, though, because I’ve stored many examples of how heedless Ryan is, and he’s concluded from each of them that no one should rely on him for anything anymore, which is less labor and more of an incentive for this, so maybe we’re just fueling him by not depending on this wreck.

Just then, Spencer enters the bathroom with a wide smirk plastered to his face (I’m starting to think that it’s hopelessly permanent, not that he cares in the slightest, as it accentuates his bossy personality), and that smirk is immediately illuminated upon spotting us. “Didn’t know you clowns enjoy hanging out in the bathroom so much.”

Instead of my panic attack climbing the walls of my mind towards its zenith, it’s quelled by a new emotion called annoyance, and it’s mightier than I ever would’ve imagined. It’s always in town when Spencer strolls through my vision with that obnoxious strut of his, passing for as long as it demands for me to rant about how much I hate this guy, and then it dissipates like a gas departing into unmapped regions, but it’s everlastingly buried close to the surface of my mind, and it’s everlastingly untamed.

“Why don’t you just shove off, Spencer?” Ryan groans in lieu of me, hands reclining on the sink suspended on the dull canary wall.

“Where’s Dallon?” Spencer’s voice is artificialized with a depression, mocking the melancholy I know all too well. “Did he finally overdose?”

Dallon might have, and that’s none of my business to know why if he did, though I would be incredibly intrigued to figure out why it is that I was so insignificant to him to just go ahead and do this to himself without considering that I’d be shaken up, and I’d be scarred, and I’d be torn to shreds and left for the starving wolves, but that’s somehow okay to me, because if Dallon is happy with what’s scouring the world to murder him, then that’s not really my place to judge, even if I may be devastated over it.

I find my fists honing each other’s rage, but I remind myself that nothing really matters, that Spencer doesn’t really matter. “I’m not going to deal with you right now, okay?” I troop towards the door, Ryan a bear trap upon my heels, and Spencer whines and broadcasts the image of that child we all know him to be.

“Aww, you’re no fun.”

And just before I flee the bathroom, I glance back at him one time and plainly state, “Neither are overdoses.”

Ryan just sneers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: the fuck was this chapter like it didn't even have plot it's just to increase my word count because I'm lazy
> 
> OKAY SO I SAW THIS FUCKING WHITE KID TRYING TO DO PARKOUR BUT HE JUST FUCKING FELL FLAT ON THE GROUND I'M CACKLING AND ALSO WHITE WTF
> 
> Quarpcharp: why
> 
> AARP: sin
> 
> ~Dacuppa


	24. slidin into the dms like

There’s so much I could be doing with my life, but I choose to do nothing, because it was with Dallon that I did it all, and now that he’s gone, I’m lost in the sea of who knows what, for it could be blood, or it could be water, or it could be a mix of the two, strained and twisted into disfigurement.

I feel that I’ve noted too often on this subject like it’s still something I should be concerned with, and some may argue that it should, but I’m indifferent, and I always have been, so why is Dallon protruding from my mind so thoroughly? It’s as if he’s parting a curtain for a signal to me, as if this mystery will tear my safety to shreds, as if he knows all of this and is only trying to warn me of the obliteration of my own self, which is soon to elapse without the reminder that Dallon may be attempting to provide me with.

Maybe I’m just paranoid, but maybe that also doesn’t mean much, because I’m perpetually paranoid about bullies, about what I’ve done to deserve the agony of living while other people fight me to say that life is a gift, but they won’t listen to me when I tell them they’re wrong. If life is a gift, then it’s a gift like clothing from your grandmother; you have to smile and thank her for it, though you would’ve much rather prefered an alternative such as an iTunes card or a guitar or a lit new sticker pack or anything other than that, but beside your grieving, it’s still there. It’s what you get, and every kindergarten teacher will preach to not throw a fit over it, but kindergarteners are never cooperative, so they hide in the corners, in the shadows with blurring paint crusted over the tile, narrating through poetry and verse how they’ll seek revenge where no one else could, how they’ll obtain that iTunes gift card or that guitar or that sticker pack, how they’ll win.

If you still have hope for acquiring them, that is, because some of us would favor being tossed off of the highest cliff in history so they don’t have to deal with that second Christmas where it’s just a rerun of last year, grandma’s socks and all, as a loop is boring and dull and as monotonous as it gets, and we’re being reincarnated in that same fashion of a loop anyway, so we then ask ourselves when will it end? When will we break free from our shackles and embrace death and its cessation of a loop?

Most likely never, because humans aren’t that strong. Humans are the ones who quiver at a sharp noise. Humans are the ones who complain without end. Humans are the ones who are caught in a loop, and that is what life feels like right now for me.

A pounding noise ruptures the window, something of nightmares, the nightmare of a person climbing into your bedroom to murder you or (though not as an alternative that’s much better) kidnap you, and that’s why you fold the blinds over on each other, why you never look outside at night, why you’re scared of the dark, but what could be worse than my life right now? Why shouldn’t I address the knocker at the window?

I don’t care about what happens to me anymore, so I slice the connection between me and my comforter and trudge towards the afflicted aperture, peeling away the blinds to unearth the frazzled posture of Dallon Weekes, who hasn’t been around here in a few days and has thrown me to the wolves of anxiety, elevating questions about what could’ve harmed him out in the wild or wherever he was (because in case you haven’t noticed, I was not informed of his location, which may or may not have justified my frantic behavior throughout the school day), about what he was thinking back there, about what I did to spring this absence to life.

“Dallon!” I scream, dragging him (to hell, possibly, after what he’s done, after what he’s put me through) away from the window and onto the floor, where he lands with a thud rimmed by inconsolable whiplash. Before he can groan in anguish and sit up to tend to his wounds, he’s shoved to the ground once more and gilded with my lips upon his.

The truth is, quite simply, that I don’t give a shit about discussing why the hell it was that his decision of leaving me was so perfect in his mind, because if you ask anyone else, they’d agree with me, but they’d also probably agree that I could’ve easily done something about it, and maybe that’s plausible, and maybe it isn’t, but Dallon is back for me, back from the abyss.

And he’s laughing, a joyful sound whipped in honey and baked in splendor, a joyful sound that makes it seem, at least for a split second, that he wasn’t wallowing in a treacherous void intending to kill him without a logical reason, without a motive, and I hate myself for indulging in such a lie, but he’s been only a memory for _days_ , and how can I survive that if I don’t allow the entire treasury of my emotions to amass for the period when Dallon returns?

I’m shaking it off, and I’m dropping it, and I’m kissing him like I’ve loved him my whole life, like we’re contrarily kissing for the first time, sloppiness piled upon teen angst and heartbreak and swirled into tears savored against our lips, and it is only when Kara bursts into my room, frightened, that we recoil in surprise.

Electing to ignore the scene of her brother pinning a guy to the floor after said guy sneaked in from the window, Kara rushes towards our huddle, exclaiming, “Dallon!”

Though shocked, Dallon rejuvenates his composure for a smile as his arms bifurcate to envelope my sister.

Kara was almost as intimate with our prior event as I was, dashing outside when she detected the shrieking piano of my sobbing and sobbing herself when she realized what had recently occurred, and she has mourned with me just as rigorously, so to see that one of her best friends is delivered back home safely is a wondrous sight.

“Why did you ever leave us, Dallon?” Droplets of saltwater scar my sister’s doe eyes, and it is within a brief moment that I catch Dallon hesitating, punishing himself for what he did to this poor girl who loved him very deeply and loved him very loyally, this poor girl who wept for days because she couldn’t bear the loss of someone so important to her, this poor girl who did nothing immoral yet suffered at the hands of it, and in the awareness of this, Dallon is rendered absolutely clueless.

“I won’t do it again. I promise.”

“But _why_?” Kara’s tone is more desperate now, and Dallon looks to me for advice, but I’ll have to side with my sister on this one. He can’t just leave his _petit ami_ and his sibling, then expect us to be sympathetic, expect us better yet to be understanding of why he did such a terrible thing to those whose actions never warranted it.

“I was foolish, and I messed things up for all of us.”

Damn right he did. I just want to clarify to Dallon that what he pushed me into was no game, no joke, no carnival ride. What he pushed me into was lamentation and all of its perverse benefits, and I hate the manner in which it scaled my spine and whispered into my ear that it wasn’t out to murder me when that was a blatant lie only an idiot would defend, but I guess I _am_ an idiot, because I was scared as hell.

“Where did you even go? Aren’t your parents in France?” I inquire, granting acrimony a seat closer towards the front row yet preserving its distance for caution.

“Yeah, they’re with my sister in Bordeaux, so I, um…” Dallon’s focus skates over me and against the dimly sketched wall, back and forth like a crumbling metronome. “I just slept in an alley.” He prepares himself for my criticism, which is definitely the next step in sorting through this incomprehensible chain of events.

How could he disrespect himself like that when he could’ve fled a life of scarcity to instead cherish his moments with me? He chose sleeping in an alley over his own best friend, over relinquishing his pills, over helping himself, and I hate to say it, but that’s messed up, and I’m stressed beyond compare.

“You slept in a fucking alley?” Kara’s mouth is suspended in confusion, more disappointed than astonished, but it’s just a tactic she deploys to maintain her obnoxiously sarcastic personality while she’s silently burning inside, and with her comment Dallon compresses his limbs as if a puppy accused of a crime.

Pitying this wreck, I bunch Dallon in my arms and seed an abbreviated kiss to his lips only to appease him, which Kara distastefully denounces with the gyration of her eyes, and I observe that his skin perspires a winter chill, a suitor to his subdued trembling, but Dallon’s endured enough already, so I discard the thought and save it for tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the fresh start we all need.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: THE BOYS ARE BACK (YEAH!) THE BOYS ARE BACK
> 
> honestly high school musical is the shit lmao
> 
> I entered this fanfiction contest thing on wattpad run by this famous bandom fic writer and they commented that my writing style was too sophisticated and now I'm stressed for some reason
> 
> Queckneck: would you read a sequel to this? cause I'm making one (I originally planned on writing it first but then I realised I need to know the backstory and all its details)
> 
> Aecksweck: well I don't read my work anyway so
> 
> ~Dacankle


	25. halp dis bitch

I’m more concentrated on my art than I ever have been before, and that’s partially because Dallon refuses to speak, only catching his cheek with his hand and spiraling his paintbrush around and around aimlessly as if it’ll suddenly morph into something beautiful, something he thinks he’s not. That’ll never happen, on the contrary, but I don’t tell him, because I’m sure he would never listen anyway.

In fact, he hasn’t listened to anything I’ve said in the past twenty-six minutes and eleven seconds (and counting), and it’s as if he’s a drone now, only programmed to swish that fucking paintbrush around on the carousel of his numbed fingers, staring blankly off into space where he thinks that he can be free from humanity’s plague.

He can’t, though, because it’s always there, and I’ve tried the same as he has with no luck or outcome or anything other than frustration and an urge to try again, but nothing works, because you’re still human just like the rest of the people around you, and both your biology and your mind are mundane spirits fighting against you, mundane spirits persuading you that there’s nothing operating in the undergrounds of your own self, even when you’ve decrypted the slightest hint about the truth.

Dallon is familiar with this, and violently so, and he’s quiet about what’s really functioning inside him, about what those random checks on his paper resemble to him, about why he’s not talking to me.

I’ve tested broaching the topic of why he left — unsuccessful with a dash of anxiety — or inviting him to the new movie that was just released — a blank response — or even Van Gogh, his favorite artist, but all that lies before me is a shell of a man, and nothing can wake him from his coma.

It is my hope that Ryan’s arrival will light a conversation into our heads, for his regular loquaciousness is sure to prompt people into small talk at the least and affect their day for the better, if only a bit, but Ryan isn’t here yet, so I’m forced to endure more silent minutes where Dallon and my roles have flipped, where Dallon is lazy about his art and I am avid.

Ever since he slid through my window like a vandal in the night, a vandal I’ve feared doing just what he did, Dallon has seemed somehow disillusioned by what he’s already experienced with me, despite professing that any time he spends with someone he loves is magnificent.

His art is dull and dreary, his clothes are mismatched and sloppy, and his eyes, formerly so awake and gleeful, are now dulled not to a blue jay’s feathers but to faded cobblestone trekked over by bombs. His hair follows no orders, instead trickling over his forehead while its roots are cramped by a beanie to hide the fact that he only cares enough to make it seem like he doesn’t _not_ care, just to please the public, but anyone can decry that the shallows under his eyes are not the same as the violet on his paper.

It’s evident that Dallon won’t be chatting with me anytime soon, and Ryan is late to school for a dental appointment but will be back within the class period, so I focus on the art that Dallon taught me to enjoy, to worship, to improve in my own fashion, and with that mindset installed into my brain, each cascading leaf of crimson and cobalt something special born directly from my paintbrush like scenery never before witnessed by mankind.

It’s nothing much, but I extract the details from it so that it is, at least to me, and I feel that there’s something to be said about my passion for this scrappy painting of a tree, because even though it’s nothing from an art gallery, it’s important to me that it was manifested out of Dallon’s faith in my creative skills, a faith that is now lifelessly hovering over his own painting of nothing distinguishable, just a ballet of lines and dots and swirls, and as much as I labor to decipher what it all means (Dallon seems the type to pile significance into ostensibly ordinary things), there’s just _nothing_ , plain and simple.

Dallon notices my efforts and shields his paper from me with an arm strewn barely past the sheet, narrowly diverging from a blood splatter of zaffre, and he still doesn’t speak a single word.

“Dallon, why won’t you talk to me?”

Nothing, only the rhythm of my absently grabbed pencil upon the metal table.

“Dallon, you used to be so happy.”

“I used to be a lot of things,” he finally protests, transporting the radiation from his eyes unto me. “Things that are dead and gone, just like I am, and none of them are important anymore, as you can’t even exhume them from their shoddy graves and estimate how much they were a part of me, because I hate them all anyway.”

“So you prefer this drone of a self to your jubilant childhood?”

“My childhood wasn’t jubilant” is his snarl, packed with aggression and shipped to my fragile heart. “My childhood was solitary and unbecoming. My childhood was a disappointment to my parents who only ever wanted me to pursue literature. My childhood is the reason I’m the mess you see today, so don’t you dare assume that I’ve broken off of that time like you’ve broken off of your rationality.”

Though a comment meant to calumniate my lack of stability in a world where the lines are bleared and confounding, it’s more of a jab at Dallon’s own atrocity, dictating that no one who chooses to be around him is in their right mind, so the only offense drizzled over my ego is an offense I drizzle vicariously over his.

“I’m all right, okay?” Dallon pauses until he can trap my attention within those gentle hands of his, and with my sheepish eyes he does. “I’m all right. I wanted to make sure you understand that, because I know that _you’re_ not all right.”

I’m on the verge of crying — no, _sobbing_ into Dallon’s arms and never letting him go, because I know what will happen if I do, but this is art class with homophobes who despise any form of cracked masculinity, so I can only collect the waterworks internally as my organs mutate into pools and slides to accommodate them.

Because I know that Dallon’s correct. I’m _not_ all right, and neither is he, but we’ve somehow expelled a sort of levee system from each other for protection against ourselves, and that’s all we need to survive, to just scrape by, and we’re trudging through it together.

“ _Je n’aime que toi_ ,” Dallon whispers, allowing a blanket to cast shadows over his words and lure them into secrecy.

It seems as though I’m not the sole one he loves, reflecting on both his pills and his demons who have found a home in his heart where I thought only I could reside, but I’ll exchange the phrase with him and personify his intentions.

“ _Toujours, mon chéri._ ”

Dallon smiles for an abbreviated moment of three seconds, then selling himself to the wretched painting in front of him as if the treasure we just shared is as worthless as he views himself, and now we’re both typified by a despair that’s only smitten by the entrance of the perky Ryan Ross, sketchpad clasped to his side.

“Hey, guys!” His cheer is dissonant with the mood with which we previously struck our portion of the art room, but we eventually grow towards it, like moths to their fiery murder weapon.

“Hey, Ryan,” Dallon mumbles, still perusing the utter modesty of his painting.

Grinning with a tad of irony, Ryan injects far too much bounce into his step as he sits down. “The dentist was fucking shit,” he claims, reminiscent of a character on a kids’ show who’s more parts sarcasm than fervor and is attempting to showcase how much he hates performing for imbecilic children. “They put this shit on my teeth that tastes like the flesh from the roof of your mouth after you drink something hot (or like sprinkling too much parmesan on star-shaped pasta), and it’s equally as pasty as their Caucasian asses, and it’s terrible.”

Everyone knows what Ryan’s describing — the dreaded tooth cleaner that concludes the dental appointment and rushes you towards the water fountain to spit out as much as you can, but the dental assistant is asking you what kind of toothpaste you want before you can flee, and as you’re struggling to speak with a mouth full of fluid, they’ll tell you to swallow that pasty ass motherfucking cumshot of dentistry like it isn’t the worst thing on this godforsaken planet, and you’ll then disobey the dentist by eating promptly afterwards just to remove that horrible taste in your mouth, and it’s odd to think that this is what Ryan has been doing for the past hour while he stranded me with an unconscious Dallon.

Glimpsing hastily Dallon’s work in progress then guiding myself towards Ryan, I wish him one thing, the only thing I can muster: “I hope you had a great time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: "THE CUMSHOT OF DENTISTRY" WHY DID I WRITE THIS
> 
> Qualepeno: what's the worst part of the dentist for you?
> 
> Alepeno: the same part Ryan and Brendon hate
> 
> ~DakoTEAR-IN-MY-HEART


	26. whack me with a broom idc

We’re doing nothing, and by nothing I mean literally nothing besides stare at the wall and at the table, back and forth in the delusion that perhaps there will be something new resting there next time, but there never is, and our silence scolds us for it like we’re dogs guilty of tearing up the pillows, or in this case our lives.

I already tore up my life in middle school when I was convinced that everything transpiring around me was my own fault instead of the tyrannical bullies’, which would’ve been the more logical conclusion but nevertheless the absent one, and now Dallon is tearing up his with these fucking placebo pills that we all know aren’t placebo in the slightest.

If we were to assess how they’re operating inside him, one would find that it’s more of the nocebo effect than the placebo effect, because he’s not the same person he was when I first met him when he cornered me at the lockers to ask for directions towards the cafeteria, because that person was lively and joyous and practically skipping if not in his body then in his mind, and now I see a fragmented piece of glass that’ll cut anyone who attempts to investigate the mystery of why he’s so messed up all of the sudden, why he’s pushing away the only people who care about him, why he’s like this, why he made me love him for it.

I could’ve just detached myself from his life. There was no point in the excess of basically living with him once the tutoring profession was completed, because chances are people aren’t generally intimate with their tutors like we are, so they could just run along and drain their existence until it’s dry. _I_ could just run along and do the same. I never had to engage in this relationship, but I did, and now there are stunning repercussions.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so selfish, because everyone understands that people’s problems don’t just vanish when no one’s there to witness them. It’s the classic tree falling in the woods punchline but chewed up, spat out, and related to Dallon while it’s doused in the oddly fascinating performance of well intended mutilation. Someone most likely would’ve assisted Dallon with his issues, but did it have to be me? Me, of all people. Me, who barely escaped bullies myself. Me, who now has to escape bullies that exist only in the mind, in my companion’s mind. Me, who has no idea what they’re doing and is scared as shit because they don’t want to lose the only friend they’ve been able to maintain throughout their pathetic little journey to isolation and cup noodles.

I’ve tried helping Dallon but to no avail, as he’s now sitting at the table and staring at the wall and back towards the wooden expanse for dining, and he’s somehow content with that, with this open display of nothingness, and I just want to fucking cry. I can’t, though, because I’m fucking stupid and anxious and dying inside, and my vibes will only worsen Dallon, so I wallow in the same silence that’s been a cloud over us for almost an hour of nothing.

And I hate the fact that we’re doing nothing, because that’s what I’ve spent the entirety of my life doing, and I’ve missed out on many opportunities that could’ve lifted me from that flaming underworld of boredom, but they didn’t, because I was too occupied by doing nothing, and I can’t allow this affliction to plague me any longer than it’s been plaguing me.

It’s time to speak, and it’s time for Dallon to listen, and it’s time for my words to be heard by the one person I love without end.

“I want you to teach me how to paint emotionally.”

This is the first sound reverberating around the room in an hour, and the thought is quite startling to Dallon, his whole body leaping like rocks on water the hue of his blue jay eyes, but he hastily recovers to make it seem like he isn’t just as terrified of rapid changes as I am. “Paint emotionally?” His brow gaps his forehead in a finely pointed streak of dark hair, pleading tacitly for clarification.

“Yeah, how do you inspire yourself?”

“All you have to do is assay your emotions like you would assay lab data.” And just like that, Dallon’s back to his rampant game of silence, but I refuse to back down.

“Show me, then.”

Without a word, still enjoying the conservation of quietness, a quietness that battles the pitter patter of Dallon’s feet towards the art studio, my friend beckons me to a well of black, no other paints to be seen. “Sit.”

I’m obedient, only because I fear that he’ll once again surrender to the silence if I don’t, so I marginate my back into a ruler to prepare for whatever it is that Dallon has planned.

My companion procures a paintbrush from an old cup riddled with butterflies that Kara crafted in kindergarten, and, bristles diving into the starlings’ nest, he spears me with the color of the void.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what Dallon is constructing entirely out of his imagination that’s evidently set towards painting emotionally, but whatever it is, it’ll be amazing and totally above my skill level.

Dallon’s onyx breadcrumbs are also pins down my neck, spiking me on the apple of my throat and the arteries so vital to life yet so close to his fingers and to devastation, and each stroke is a singular masterpiece strung together on the clothesline of a person who could only survive in his world of art though never feels sorry about it, only offers his melancholic adventures to me but transmuted into security. “I’m going to share a piece of advice with you, Brendon, because I’m guessing you’ll be in need of it soon: don’t think you are helpless. After all, you can use your tears as paint, just as I am doing now. There is always something good to come out of your ador, even if you cannot detect it at first.”

I say nothing, but I imbibe his words like they’re the only important things in this world, and they might be.

“I would like to tell you a story. There is a room, a place flavored by the shadowed wolves of the night, whose only source of light is the vintage television propped on the rickety old table hiding in isolation. There are no doors and windows populating the area, no bricks puncturing the cohesive structure, no escape.” Dallon halts his painting hand to gaze sternly into my eyes, as if to check to see if I’m okay, which I’m not, but I don’t elucidate that fact. “Can you imagine it?”

I nod dutifully, still however stiff on the stool as the paint chips against the texture of my face, a texture approaching tears that will clash against the ebony like a forbidden romance culminating in tragedy.

“Good. Now, very few know about this room, but the select group that does say that no one lives there, but that, you must understand, is a widespread sophism, anyway innocent due to ignorance.” He waves it off as if the details affect him in some way or another, though that couldn’t be less true, because in the rare chance that he is among the select group who knows of this location, why would he be telling me?

“There is, in fact, a person residing in this wretched place, and it is a boy, a raven-haired teenager, positioned on the floor with legs latched to his chest, eyes domesticated on that archaic television that might as well be his only possession, and he comprehends that he wants something more, but he’s trapped inside an area where he cannot acquire it, though he figures that the television is bundling answers inside of it with a commercial modeling eternal happiness, and all he knows is that he needs it, but he’s too absorbed in his television program of depression to worry about obtaining that product anyway.”

I shift in my stool, considering myself unwelcome in such a profession of authority over my friend’s secrets. “Dallon, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Do you know this boy?” Dallon digresses, tone polished by sophistication and a hatred for my question. “He might be more familiar than you would think.”

At first, I’m wondering how in the world I would be familiar with this teenager off in the desolate meadows of France in a box that some people know about but won’t rescue him from, but then the pieces click together, and I form my answer. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Dallon smiles in response, a nuance in the corner of his lips. “Spot on, _mon petit ami_.”

I’m more confident in myself than I should be, so confident that the crow feather paint previously on me is now sloshing over Dallon’s mouth like the Black Death, just as hot and jarring and murderous to our modesty, and every speck in peppermint bark belonging to this man is sweeter than it all.

“ _Je n’aime que toi_ ,” Dallon promises, just like always, but this time it seems like he almost forgot about saying it, like he doesn’t mean it anymore, though I’m probably paranoid and stupid and wrong, because I am all the time, so I’m accustomed to this idiodicy and should just brush it off and say my fucking line. It’s simple enough, for I at least mean it.

“ _Toujours, mon chéri_.”

And for a moment it feels like we are healed from the shards of one broken heart meant to be together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: lmao I just remembered something but spoilers
> 
> Quorkchop: how much has wolfstar ruined your life
> 
> Arkcharp: LITERALLY bi,,itch I cannot explain how much the love between remus lupin and sirius black kills me on a daily basis because I,,sut cannot
> 
> ~DaCringe-Kid


	27. BITCH YOU THOUGHT

Going out on the town in the middle of the day is quite an adventure, especially when the person going out on the town has never been out on the town since he traveled to America, as there was barely time beyond English tutoring to explore the uncharted area of Las Vegas, Nevada, a strange place with ruthless scorpions and scalding climates galore.

Perhaps he shouldn’t be out here, especially when his dearest friend has no clue that he’s roaming the streets with a certain emptiness on his mind, a certain emptiness that he cannot label but is certain nonetheless, because that friend has always been enthusiastic about communication, but that communication is nowhere to be found, and yes, this is a deceptive thing he’s portraying, but sometimes deception is necessary to save the people who have become vulnerable simply by meeting him, though their foolishness derived from that is arguably punishable by the pain.  
The man venturing through the streets with that certain emptiness in his mind can still hear everything. He can hear the clap of his feet upon the pavement. He can hear his heartbeat scuffing against his ribcage. He can hear every bird screeching in the distance, colors and songs thriving in the September air. He can even hear his demons returning from the abyss he tossed them into when he met _son petit ami_ , and it’s not so much that it’s harrowing, just pandering to his knack for observance on a grander scale that he shouldn’t like but does, but he doesn’t allow it to nettle him, as the pharmacy is just around the block, and everything is okay at the pharmacy.

The pharmacy is where the medicine is hoarded, the medicine that’ll help freaks like Dallon remedy themselves with a dose of Pepto Bismol that’ll clog their throats with its disgusting brand like an embellishment from a serial killer. The pharmacy is where no one will ask you why you’re purchasing these products, because that’s technically against the law. The pharmacy is where you can choose your poison without judgment from limitation. The pharmacy is where your friends think you’re safe, incorrectly perhaps, and the pharmacy is where you come for a hidden death.

The store is deserted, save a clerk around the age of twenty-five sculpted in front of a Marvel comic book, and this supplies Dallon with a dash of relief as he steps inside to greet the aroma of mixed flavors that all of the sensible kids abhor with a nevertheless sickly passion.

The clerk barely acknowledges him as Dallon peruses the shelves, only responding with an identifying look to make certain that this man is a customer instead of a robber who will pin this crime to him for being so inattentive and eventually fire him by relation. Part of this is reassuring, because the reason Dallon is visiting this place alone is to escape the condemnation of his only close friend so that his only close friend can escape the condemnation of what he’s about to do to himself with this plethora of medical devices that are more complex than most would believe, and Dallon himself is among the people who have no idea what they’re handling but operate it anyway, because it’s the sole thing this troubled child needs for his jaded life.

His jaded life has relinquished its _joie de vivre._ Its joy of living. This phrase is an unfamiliar ghost to Dallon, someone he passes on the street without a second thought because it’s not like he knows them, only comprehending that their life must be as convoluted as anyone else, and that’s a given idea called sonder that’s haunted him just as much as the former, and both _joie de vivre_ and sonder are fighting against each other in a war that Dallon cannot control and had no idea was occurring until blatant evidence was presented.

And now that war has nagged him without rest. Wars never rest, though, always plotting surprise attacks upon sleeping enemies, always plundering shares they were never allotted, always wailing over crimson, mangled bodies yet not reforming a single law of battle because this bloodbath is how it needs to be.

It’s obvious that Dallon cannot affect these wars, so he only plays his part like the good kid his parents never told him that he was, merely selecting the perfect medicine in peace, which is proving more difficult than he had once suspected.

There are so many products for him to choose from, so many boxes and bottles and bags to consume far too eagerly until he’s surfeited with the malevolence of the grave that has never been so malevolent to _him_ , but Dallon eventually opts for Pepto Bismol, Tums, and some random cough medicine manufactured by the pharmacy, whose taste is probably less than pleasant, because it’s not like he cares about his murder weapon when all types of it are bitter and slather corporal acrimony down your throat.

Dallon assembles a shopping bag of the medical items, prepared to check out with the absent-minded clerk, when that same absent-minded clerk halts him with a grin, with his routine process.

“Can I help you find anything?” The clerk is waiting for an extended period of time, Dallon being helplessly stunned by the question, which leads him to conclude that the worker’s limbs must be aching inconsolably from this artificiality by now.

“No, I’m fine.” Dallon ducks his head to scan the aisle once more to make it seem like he’s occupied by his search when, in reality, he’s just anxious for the man to leave him alone to his quiet death.

He’s still here. “Are you sure?”

The Frenchman swoops upward, partially annoyed. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He then absorbs the appearance of the worker, his tone mitigating into excitement. “I like your shirt,” Dallon comments, and the clerk, whose sudden spotlight points towards his _Kenny_ nametag, peers down at his tee and smiles, as if he was unaware that he’s been wearing a Nirvana shirt for the entirety of his shift, and then some, most likely.

“Oh, yeah! Thanks.” Kenny laughs awkwardly, hands corralled on his hips as he surveys the shelves to resume his job while he speaks. “I actually listen to them. I’m not one of those teenage hipsters trying to be relevant.”

“What a shame Kurt died, though.”

“Truly tragic.”

For the first time in a while, Dallon is enjoying himself with a complete stranger, his small talk capabilities previously thought to be nonexistent now emerging to converse with someone who doesn’t know the tiniest detail about him besides the fact that he listens to Nirvana, and that’s okay, because to Dallon it is like forgetting it all, forgetting the placebo pills that everyone knows aren’t placebo, forgetting the way he marched out of my house a few days ago solely out of misguided impulse, forgetting all of his worries from bonding over a freaking Nirvana shirt possessed by a pharmacy clerk who happened to be doing his job and nothing more by asking Dallon if he needed help with anything, and of course he does — he needs a lot of help, as his brain is a cesspool of every horror movie combined into a single organ, but he’s cognizant that it’s not the clerk’s duty to act as his therapist, and he’s supposed to be forgetting anyway.

“I think I’m ready to check out,” Dallon states, breaching the uncomfortable tension between the guy clad in a Nirvana shirt teetering on the balls of his feet and the scarf-laced French boy with intentions so sharp they could kill a man, and he’s realizing that the man being killed is definitely him.

Kenny leads the boy towards the cash register, floating behind the counter as he reaches for the bag of products, which Dallon provides after a stiff moment of hesitation. Taking no offense by his delay, the worker punches in some numbers on his screen, just as cashiers do, and each button squashed is a needle in Dallon’s slivering heart, because even if Kenny doesn’t recognize it, Dallon knows that every second ushers him closer to his demise, and maybe he should just back out, because he still has the choice he made for himself, the choice that can be bent however he pleases, and that’s what his friend would’ve wanted, what his friend has been laboring to achieve, though unsuccessfully, as Dallon doesn’t utter a single word to halt Kenny’s actions, and he just doomed himself through it.

If Dallon is sorry, he can’t decipher it, because all of his emotions have become jumbled in the mess that is his life, but he’s fine with that, for his jumbled life will be over soon with these products he’s purchasing this very moment. Maybe, however, he should be sorry for Kenny, who hasn’t the faintest grasp on the fact that he’s assisting Dallon’s murder, but how will Kenny grieve if he doesn’t know what happened? Everything is set, and even _son petit ami_ would’ve seen it coming.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: y'all gonna kill me now
> 
> Quaintrain: what instruments do you play?
> 
> Aintrain: I sing and play the rhythm guitar
> 
> ~Da[band]camp


	28. literally fight me???

As Dallon exits the pharmacy who basically just fucking served as his fucking murder weapon, his heart is in places that it shouldn’t be, pacing up and down his throat, flaking off of its nest in his lungs, its heat ghosting over his skin of fluctuating temperature now preserved in the fires of hell, and that’s just the way Dallon likes it, for it reminds him of where he’s going when those products he purchased charge the destruct button on his life.

He’s fine, really. It’s just that he’s tired, so fucking tired of living, of breathing, of carrying his sins on his shoulders and claiming that he’s perfectly normal while others understand enough to know that maybe a statement such as that isn’t so veritable, but as much as he tries to sleep, to rest his head on his pillow with the sheets angled over him like curtains to protect against the unforgiving glare of death, his eyes are still bloodshot and alert, awake and prying, desperate and searching for something to save him when the answer has been in front of him all along. Dallon conjectures that these tablets will paint sleep over his lids, so permanent and fulfilling that he will no longer experience the ache of tiredness, and the prospect of this outcome swells his esteem with joy.

So he punctuates his step with a cheer that should not be present but nevertheless is, and he envisions a place to portray his makeshift bed where he can be devoured by the sleep he has not yet obtained though will soon, and it is in an alleyway that he finds his well anticipated solace.

Alleyways are not usually the fortes of normal humans, and that’s justifiable. Alleyways are where murders transpire, where illegal drugs are exchanged if the alleyways are desolate enough, where no one dares to look for fear of these things, but today it’s an odd sort of comfort to Dallon, the fear having vanished from him primarily because his mind is scarier than an alley could ever be.

He’s cognizant that this alleyway is the scene to the ultimatum, to his final death in the most corporal form, and what better place to hold as a witness than a dreary expanse like this? It’s not some bustling city environment where everyone will drop to their knees in tears for someone they only know is dead and nothing else. It’s not some hospital whose knowledge is just the same, just as phlegmatic. It’s not some home setting where people will mourn someone whom they knew very well, unlike the other places, as that only carries destruction, and Dallon doesn’t want to hurt his friend. He perceives that he’s hurt the man enough, and though Dallon won’t be around for the aftermath, he knows his friend will be, and he just can’t do something as monstrous as that to the one person whom he loves unconditionally.

Which arguably makes this more of an agonizing process, the process of overdosing, the process of dying, the process of relinquishing any rectitude the charming Dallon Weekes may have possessed to convulse in an alleyway where no one knows he is, where no one thinks he would ever end up, but here he is, and he’s accepting death wholeheartedly once he brushes past the anxieties with the maxim that they won’t matter when he’s decaying, and it’s true enough. He needs some truth in his life, in his life that is soon to be fading into memories in his scrapbook back home in France where not even his best friend can view it, so really it’s like he did nothing at all for the poor kid, but it’s not possible for him to act beneficially now that he’s already settled in his murder scene with an array of medicines to strike him down physically and accompany the anecdotes when Dallon has struck himself down mentally.

Kenny, that lovely pharmacy clerk, had no idea that when Dallon stepped out of his store he also stepped out of his body with only his sole to lead him, had no idea that he was aiding Dallon’s murder, had no idea that their discussion about Nirvana was mostly a deception to distract Dallon from the very event Kenny spurred to life, if only indirectly, and now Kenny _will_ have no idea that this nice boy who materialized in his pharmaceutical shop will be a nice boy who will materialize in the grave with another nice boy to lament over the love spilled like Dallon’s blood this day.

And in some way, it’s unfair to Kenny that Dallon is ruining himself like this, especially when it’s with products from Kenny’s store, products that Kenny himself sold to Dallon without knowing their purpose, because that’s against the law, and Kenny regards himself as a person with loads of integrity under his belt who never breaks the law, just as anyone should be, but once again Kenny will have no fucking clue that the dead boy in the alleyway was the same one laughing with him only hours prior to when that boy _became_ dead, and that’s okay, too.

These pills are the only things Dallon has ever demanded, outweighing even the love of friends and the support of family, because he recognizes that both of those are impossible to attain when you’re someone like him, someone who isolates himself to shun his obvious phobia of human judgment, someone who can’t separate hatred from indifference, someone who decided to consume these items because he never received what he deserved and it’s now paying off in his downfall, so it’s more than admissible for him to be ingesting them soon, as they were never available so encouragingly to him before.

He doesn’t think of his friend when he cracks open the bottle of Tums. He doesn’t think of his friend when he discards the Pepto Bismol because of how it stains his tongue in displeasure even after he promised that his poison doesn’t have to be suitable to his taste buds, but he comprehends that he’s selfish and picky and needs finer details like this for him to flourish in his last moments, and he’ll be despising himself until death. He still doesn’t think of his friend when he loads a tablet into his mouth like the gun whom he concluded was too messy to kill him, when he smiles at what’s to grab his neck to strangle him, to wrestle him six feet through the dirt, and soon there are more and more pills secured behind his lips as Dallon is steadily approaching the mark where remedies are more dangerous than helpful, where an overdose is the final zenith of his trials, where he can be safe in his actions and in his casket.

There’s a smile on Dallon’s cheeks as he pops another pill every sixty seconds, because he is certain that his battles will cease, that his spirit will perish, that everything he’s fought for will be acquired in a matter of minutes, and that’s simply delightful to him, though it’s not so delightful to the people around him, but they’ve never been here for his success anyway. They’ve only been here for to witness his pain and the glory of announcing that they helped him when all they brought to the table was their neurotypical backwash. Even then, however, no one shows up donning armor and defending his mind from attack, so because of that, pills seem like a better alternative to obliterate the war in its entirety, all of its soldiers included.

His mistake was that he kept looking in the mirror in the hopes of finding the monstrous person that he knew he was so that the lines casting a haze over his perception could finally be cleared, but all he saw in that mundane piece of glass was this man who seemed normal enough to pass as a human, and it was surprisingly evident to him in this moment that what this meant wasn’t that he would be a functional member of society, but that no one could hear him cry for help behind this mask of security. He’s free now, with these layers of medicine upon his lap, ascending towards an overdose.

This type of dying is necessary, and he wishes that his _petit ami_ would see that, so stricken by fog that health is a mess in his head. Yes, this is incredibly painful and abusive and incurable, but it’s also the motive to exhume the fact that while Dallon has always thought that suicide would be his greatest enemy, in this alleyway it’s nothing more than an old friend.

The Tums package had instructed him to never eat more than ten individual pieces in a twenty-four hour period, so Dallon codes his body for fourteen, his favorite number to fit this situation where his preferences will be acknowledged, and it is with this final tablet that his blooming symptoms are made clear.

His head pounds against the air for release, like a battering ram of blood is spazzing against his skull, back and forth and back and forth until it feels as though he can endure it no longer, though it won’t be much longer anyway. His muscles are rocks leaping over water, oxen towing carts with the concept of freedom a fresh topic in their minds as they tug unsuccessfully at the ropes shackling them to slavery. He is swerving in and out of focus, each blink a blur and a flash of color strewn haphazardly across his vision as if it’s a coping mechanism for a solitary child. Every tale of seasickness is floundering inside his stomach all at once, the screaming of sailors as they bail the excess of liquid from the boat too vivid for him to handle. Sweat hangs like willow branches from his forehead, from the fabric of his dirtied skin, flowering as a significant factor of his doom. By now he’s unsure of where he is in the most literal way possible, because he’s always been confused of where his mind has gone, but nothing is distinguishable anymore — not the apple spraypainted on the wall, not the words of “ _je n’aime que toi_ ” printed underneath, not his trembling fingers endeavoring weakly to clutch his murder weapon, not anything but labyrinths and shrieking and anguish. He is aware that this cocktail of sensations is like a prison break from the jail of Dallon’s organism, and yet he’s flowing willingly along with it.

As a child, he was waiting for the stars to move while the stars were waiting for _him_ to move, but he couldn’t do such a thing, as he was chained to a tether so controlling that the stars’ movement was the only thing to aid him, but they only claimed that he was too childish for his own good, so he grew up prematurely and will now die prematurely. It’s what those stars he loved would’ve wanted.

All he needed was to impress someone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: oh my fucking god how many of you are crying
> 
> Quaruto: do you watch anime
> 
> Aruto: okay I know this is such an off-topic thing to be discussing when I just broke your hearts, but I would just like to clarify that I am not a weeb and I don't watch anime because I've heard that it is hell and annoying and takes up too much of your youtube suggestion feed when you've been listening to sad music lately so no I do not but there was this huge anime guy on a sheet of paper hanging in the P.E. office and I think I died
> 
> ~Dakweeb


	29. Kennard is good

Working at the pharmacy is not the most difficult job to operate, per se, but when you’ve occupied it since the summer when you thought you would be finally free and then had to deal with financial instability, it’s more arduous than you would’ve first thought.

It consumes Kenny’s hours as if it were something important, as if selling people medicine is worthwhile, as if he can compare to the skill of a licensed doctor, and yes, while he’s saving people from the torturous symptoms of the common cold, it’s a dreary life behind the counter, and even curing mild sickness isn’t much of an achievement.

So because of that inadequacy Kenny experiences as he tallies the visits of his customers to pass the time, as he exchanges money back and forth and never decides to spruce it up with the notion that it’s been all around the country and has now fallen into his hands, as he selects the perfect remedy for people who would be clueless otherwise yet never learn later that Pepto Bismol doesn’t treat the influenza and keep on coming back to him for the advice that they should’ve imbibed months before but didn’t because they were too filled with snot and coughs and demons in their stomachs, Kenny absolutely dreads clocking in every morning to complete yet another day of monotonous pharmacy sales in the desert of Nevada.

If someone expected him to live off of the money from being employed at a desolate pharmacy that no one is aware of, then they would be absurd and would most likely be directed to the nearest doctor. As a solution to his minimal salary, Kenny thrives off of the donations from his family in return for the occasional babysitting session, whose pay is redirected towards his bills instead of cash in his hand.

Nevertheless, Kenny still hates that stupid old pharmacy, despite its presence being his only source of money earned entirely by himself, and each day at seven o’clock, his heart is released into the wild to frolick in the fields and in the streets and in his house when he passes through its doors, and though it’s nothing special, just a one story structure with piles of clothing scattered lazily about it with no prospect of cleaning in sight, it’s better than that devilish pharmacy that never receives any notable action for Kenny to report to the friends he doesn’t have.

This seven o’clock is rather dismal to say the least, Kenny comes to understand, as his eyes reel in the scenery from the alleyway around the block from the shop and find that nice boy he served only approximately half an hour before, wallowing in his own self-pity in the form of medication tumbling out of his fingers.

Kenny doesn’t know how to respond, and that’s typical of someone who’s stumbled upon a barely living body in the darkness of an alley with no recollection of how or why he found himself in a situation that commanded him to apply the ostensibly harmless products to his body, primarily ostensibly harmless products from _Kenny’s_ work environment, and upon the perspective his throat seals into the worst fear of a claustrophobe.

This kid seemed so _kind_ when Kenny encountered him in the pharmacy, complimenting his Nirvana shirt, and that person from a half hour ago is so unlike the person he sees now, on his back in the alley that never loved him as much as this poor boy could’ve loved himself if he had just avoided those pills, but he didn’t, and now he’s here with the slap of death stamping crimson to his cheeks, and who’s to say that he’s still alive anyway?

Kenny views himself as a generally optimistic person, even in the crossfire of a panic much like this one, so this steady supply of faith (something that this boy never possessed) prompts him to observe the vital signs of the person nearing the state of a corpse. Sewing his ear to Dallon’s chest, Kenny infers that the throbbing organ inside him is chugging to keep this boy alive, and his pulse dictates just the same.

There is still a chance for this kid’s survival, even if the kid himself couldn’t see it before he saturated his body in medication, and Kenny is determined to lift him from the abyss just as Dallon never could.

Kenny hauls the limp body over his shoulder with the minuscule amount of strength he’s retained from the few gym sessions he’s barely been able to afford with the gestation of his perpetually fruitless bank account, and to his car he dashes on his way to the hospital.

Normally, Kenny would be riding home after a prolonged work day to enjoy an episode or two of the _Big Bang Theory_ , which Tumblr tells him he should hate (but he can’t help be drawn towards it because of his passion for science that was never uncaged due to his lack of money), and that seven o’clock period would the best thing to ever happen to him as it spins around each day at exactly the same time, exactly the same place in the pharmacy.

Now, however, there’s a life on the line, and people may be asking themselves why he’s so terrified of the repercussions of this overdose when Tums are practically innocuous besides the ghastly symptoms, but this isn’t a television show, and his pharmaceutical training only extends so far, which has led him to perhaps falsely believe that he can never save anyone with his limited experience.

On the contrary, Kenny is cognizant that a doctor will maintain the skills of which he is deprived, so with that knowledge, his foot can’t slam against the pedal hard enough for his taste, and his mind can’t divert its attention from the first frame he witnessed of Dallon in that dripping alleyway, mangled and despondent and masquerading accurately as dead.

The hospital eventually hews the setting to accommodate it, the white structure stark against the blue sky intoxicated with fibers of ebony, but Kenny is only partially relieved. It requires a load of strength to carry Dallon towards the entrance, a load of strength this short man doesn’t have in his portfolio, but he somehow manages to transport the lifeless body towards the gates to the hospital, where a nurse welcomes him with her hazel irises ablaze with fright.

“Doctor!” she calls frantically, and a team of women engulfed in cobalt fabric swarm Dallon and rush him away for an emergency procedure.

One, though, lingers behind to survey the information. “What was taken?” she inquires, energized by a thirst for rapid movement.

Kenny hesitates, still shaken up by the intensity of all of this, how expeditiously it’s churning his brain to dust. “Um, yeah, tums.”

“Do you know how many?”

“No.”

Kenny’s feeling of deficit is hastily replaced by the doctor’s catapulting speech thrown directly into his face, nearly yelling: “When were they taken?”

“A half hour ago at the maximum.”

With a curt nod, the doctor scurries to her team to relay the information to them before they decide what it is that they’re going to do to save Dallon like Kenny couldn’t because of his dismissal of what he’s done for the past four months, and the worried man eventually settles into a chair in the hospital’s lobby while recovering from his anxiety of what will occur around Dallon’s body, currently inert from the foolishness he downed without any doubts about the effects on both Kenny and the friends he assumes this boy has cherished, but he knows deep down that if Dallon had friends and better yet cherished them, then he wouldn’t do something as reckless as this. That, or he’s not as kind as Kenny thought he was.

He didn’t listen to his friends, because he didn’t care enough to do so, and no — Kenny’s not implying that Dallon got what he deserved, rather that Dallon’s _friends_ were struck with things that they _didn’t_ deserve, and now they must be living in pain, but Kenny then realizes that they have no idea what happened yet, because with the nature of Dallon extrapolated solely out of his presence in a hospital for an overdose, he bets that this kid he found in the alleyway wasn’t courteous enough to leave a note for the ones who need it the most.

Kenny can’t imagine how much Dallon’s friends will suffer at the loss of the boy who couldn’t bear to stick around to spare their feelings, and it’s not like someone is required to sympathize with other humans’ requisites for solace, but Kenny merely thinks that Dallon should’ve considered them in his election to poison himself with products no one would’ve suspected could kill, and really they can’t, and that’s pretty much the salient factoid Kenny learned from his medical training, because Tums are too ubiquitous to allow people to do with them as they may, and what they could do with them is the same thing Kenny’s sitting in the hospital lobby for — because this kid he scarcely even knows reasoned that this was the best option for himself, reasoned that it doesn’t matter if people rarely ever die from a calcium carbonate overdose because a temporary taste of death is what he could control for his own body and mind and wouldn’t have to submit to his demons any longer.

And maybe that’s understandable.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: why the fuck you dyin', why you always dyin', mmoOHGMYGOD sTOpP fuckGihng DYIGgn
> 
> Quangarang: Dallon or Kenny in real life?
> 
> Angarang: okay I love them both v v much but I have to go with Dallon because he's so...so smol and such a dad and I
> 
> ~Dallonota


	30. do you ever regret writing a story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Solace by C21FX while reading  
> Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0RXSRxn4no

Everything should be okay, because Dallon and I sorted all of the details out to make sure that he wasn’t off killing himself instead of shopping at the supermarket like he said he was, and although I have no idea what he needs to pick up at the store, having never checked in the refrigerator lately because of Dallon’s proclaimed duty of cooking for me and Kara, I suppose it’s consuming far too much of his time for the supermarket to really be his destination.

I’ve tried my best not to question him, because it seems that it’s what he requires in order to thrive with as little stress as possible, but rarely does it demand two hours to stop by the grocery store and purchase whatever it is that he needs to purchase, and I know that buying heads of cabbages isn’t a lengthy activity, because no one even likes cabbages anyway, so the supply should be abundant, and Dallon should be back home.

Nevertheless, he’s still out and about, probably without his phone for me to reach him in case my heart calls for an emergency due to impenetrable anxiety, and ostensibly nothing can calm me down from this agitated state. Not one aspect whirring around me feels correct in the sense that even my mental illness has been subdued for an uncharted deluge of confusion whose origin I cannot pinpoint in the slightest, so all I can do is wash away my sins and be drowned in the watery backfire.

However, this isn’t as effective as I would’ve desired, and my stomach is still being knotted by the grimy hands of premonition without a clear cessation in my sight most ordinarily marked to tunnel vision, and that narrowness is to be expected perhaps, but I’m still jittery and bewildered and close to tears, because Dallon isn’t here, and he should be, because the supermarket is a quick highway, and it’s not for him, because I’m being slandered by anxiety, and I cannot save myself nor Dallon from its maniacal claws.

Partially conditioning myself not to worry about him is the best option for me in my current situation where stress is berating me over and over, and checking the mail is the perfect activity to separate my mind from Dallon’s unknown whereabouts that most likely aren’t at the supermarket.

My mailbox is just how it always is: boring, dull, plagued by chipping scarlet paint to hint at the grey of metal underneath, the grey of metal that the Homeowners Association despises with the combined passion of the neighborhood suburban moms. I hate going out here to check the mail, but seeing as Dallon is who knows where, the contents of my mailbox are the most exciting thing I’ve witnessed today, though there’s barely anything in it.

Today, on the contrary, a single letter reposes inside of the ant-infested chamber of my mailbox, and in a surge of elation, I snatch it from its quarters to find that the envelope is from none other than Dallon Weekes, which would be a delight if he were a husband off fighting in war, but he’s not. He’s right here in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he’s practically living with me. This should not be in here.

Although, curiosity is a powerful motive, and I find myself examining it all the way around, studying its crinkles, studying its fragrance of familiar peppermint that rocks me to sleep, studying mentally why the hell it’s in my mailbox and what this means for my mental stability.

A tint of color protrudes from the edge of the envelope, and I flip to its back to find a harrowing message that I’ve dreaded from the start of this relationship: _Inside I’ve enclosed my drawing of you. The reason it took so long was because you continued looking happier and happier, but I reckon you won’t be as happy after you read this letter, so I figured this was the best you could get._

My heart banks its fury up against my chest without a proper warning, and I assume a position of a body doubled over in agony, because this can’t be real. Dallon Weekes cannot be saying goodbye to me, not after what he’s done, after how much he’s destroyed my emotions with his eccentricity, with his artistry, with everything that I love about him that can’t be gone. Not just yet.

Even so, I’m too interested in how I look to Dallon, so with trembling extremities whose settings hover over an earthquake, I unfurl the drawing from the envelope and gasp at both its beauty in skill and the fact that this beauty will never be replicated ever again, because anyone with a brain can sense that Dallon isn’t at the supermarket and has never been.

Every stroke upon the paper is precisely calculated, mulled over for minutes at a time to contemplate if I really do look like this, and I do, actually, which twists this drawing into uncanny verisimilitude.

I wish to stare at it eternally, but there’s another attachment in the envelope, something just as daunting. A letter, which I unravel sluggishly to procrastinate with my fear of what’s inside it, but I eventually compose myself and, sucking in a voluminous breath, point my eyes towards the paper.

_Brendon, I feel like there is so much that you want to know yet so much that I haven’t told you, and it’s time for that now._

That’s right. There _is_ so much that I want to know, and there _is_ so much that Dallon hasn’t told me, and whether or not that’s because he’s selfish and scared is none of my business, but this letter is not the way to do it. Oh god, this is not it.

Dallon told me he was at the supermarket, so what does this mean? He’ll be back soon, right? It’s not like he’s finally sharing this information with me because he won’t see me again, yeah? That can’t be it. It can’t, because we were supposed to make it. He was supposed to be the first happy artist. Where hell did that go?

When I first met Dallon Weekes, his smile was the first thing I noticed about him, alabaster sousing his perfectly straight teeth and converting me towards his favor, but he’s stopped smiling now, and I’m just wondering what pit of hell he’s found himself in.

This one, I gather. The pit that commanded him to write this godforsaken letter to me with the news that he’s gone and isn’t coming back, but I carry on with the faith that Dallon never possessed.

_Before we start, I would just like to say that I don’t think you realize how easy it is to slope gently into madness when you think there isn’t, in fact, a knife gliding through your heart and draining the organ you thought was already too broken to kill again. It’s simple as most things are, but most things hide behind a mask in order to scare you. I don’t want you to be scared, Brendon. I want you to persevere, and I can only hope that you’ll do that for me._

_On the topic of things I hope you’ll do, may I ask you to write often to me? I feel like I’m hoarding too many of your favors, but this one is important, even if I cannot read the letters in my grave. Perhaps, though, it will aid you and your grief by replicating a world where I am more and my death is less. I feel like that would be nice to experience with the current circumstances._

_Yes, it’s a bit tacky to drop this letter in your mailbox without a word about it. That’s like dumping someone over text, which harbors shame from any sensible person, but I presume this form of communication is necessary to wipe up your tears. I know they’re coming, and it’s a fool’s move to try and shield them, but Ryan says your masculinity is fragile, so go ahead and be a fool, since that’s what you already think you are._

_We are all fools in life, and I am still a fool for dying, for killing myself, and surely you will call me the same. Contrarily, the only place one isn’t a fool is six feet under the pungent dirt where no one can hear them scream about how they_ remain _to be a fool, though they aren’t anymore, because the living won’t blame people for anything once they’re gone. It’s bad form, I surmise._

_Bad form is also allowing you to read this letter prematurely, so that’s why I guarded it from you on the bus. Oh, you didn’t know that’s what I was writing? You should’ve guessed, and maybe you did, but you’re probably too caught up in pitying yourself to notice that I’ve been dead since age thirteen and am finally drafting a paper to elucidate that notion. You simply cannot grant people access to your documents, though, because there’s always something they want from it, whether it be laughter or cringe or spite. They will not help you, for they want to see you fail, and I have no doubt that you are not of that group, but certainly your latent demons are. I’m all too familiar with those. I know how they operate, I know how they chastise you, and I know that they have followed me to the grave. I hope they enjoy the smell down here, and likewise I hope you enjoy the lack of smell (specifically peppermint) in your abandoned home, because you should be content with what’s occurring, as I will never walk through that door again, and any struggle you may endure to win something back for yourself is pointless._

_Am I being a bit too harsh? Conceivably. That’s how it goes when you’re cynical enough to leave someone you love. Notwithstanding, I’m sure you’re aware that a casket is harsher, and I’m sure you’re aware that not everything is about you. There we go again with the bitterness! Should I apologize? Maybe. Yet there would be a lot to apologize for, and I only have a limited supply of paper with me at the moment. You understand that I’m sorry, don’t you? It isn’t every day that you bail on your only friend, now is it?_

_Questions, questions, questions. I’m anxious, can’t you tell? It’s tiring to say goodbye but not in the obnoxious way, rather in the languid way that I’m relinquishing sleep over this letter just as you will._

_Many people have informed me that mindfulness is a sound tactic for suppressing your anxiety, numbering off your surroundings, so let’s try it out. Feel free to play along in the chill of your driveway as you’re reading this; there’s much to be said about your situation._

_For me, there’s a storm cackling outside, though you cannot see it. You already have, because you are alive while I’m writing this letter as I am not while you are reading it. I think you’d like this storm. It reminds me of us in a secluded manner that I cannot describe. Perhaps_ un coup de foudre _is suitable_. _A strike of lightning. That’s what we were, and that’s why you remind me of it. But don’t you know that lightning never lasts? You were the flashing lights of a tempest, wild and terrifyingly beautiful, and I was the thunder that horrified its spectators. This is not a dynamic we can work with, because I do not want to be feared. I know what fear looks like, and I know that_ you _do not fear me. You fear what happens when_ I _fear me, but I have spent too long in fear and know that to seek it for others would be the worst possible fate for anyone._

 _Later I was tasked with the_ best _possible fate, and I exhumed it from you. I was madly in love with every characteristic of your being, like the fact that your favorite color is red, like the fact that you secretly watch the clouds while outside, like the fact that you count everything including your blessings, but your blessings are gone, and so am I. Love, I’ve decided, is a prospect for the suicidal, and it just so happens that it didn’t function on me._

 _I was lost in the call of the void,_ l’appel du vide _. “Dallon!” it called. “Dallon, you could do it, you know.” This time it wasn’t an urge, and I’ve slipped away behind your eyes. I’ve always loved your eyes, I might add, but those eyes weren’t skilled enough to detect that I was falling, and I’m not punishing you for that, Brendon. I’m just saying you were spared from the sight of my limp body upon the pavement, and maybe you shouldn’t be thankful when all I’ve given you is a letter to explain what you will never truly know, but it’s better than you inspecting my corpse to find that these blue jay irises at whom you’ve always marveled have been flattened by clouds sagging against a rainy sky. I know that you’d be thankful for at least that._

 _However, you are much stronger than I could ever be, Brendon, and I’m sometimes wondering profusely how you do it. You can withstand this. I know you can. You can be steady like I never was, and you can move on, so now_ I’ll _move on._

 _It was a pleasure knowing you, Brendon Urie, but it is time for us to part ways, and like I have said countless times before,_ je n’aime que toi.

And as the paper plummets to the ground and my faith in living dissipates, I can only whisper one thing: “ _Toujours, mon chéri_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: lots of italics and lots of tears lmao
> 
> feel free to comment your pain because I know you're feeling it now mr. krabs
> 
> also I was at the doctor's office today and they pricked my finger and gave me a bandaid so typing is more difficult and there's probably some spelling mistakes (especially unnecessary "3" and "E")
> 
> Quaine: did you know that ted cruz is the zodiac killer
> 
> Aine: I live for this meme
> 
> ~Dakotiac-Killer


	31. go ahead and roast me

Out of all the places I could be in this time of turmoil, in this time of anguish, in this time of contemplating my friend’s abrupt suicide, I find myself standing anxiously outside of the door to Mr. Armstrong’s math classroom to relay the message that when he confiscated Dallon’s pills he both helped and harmed him, and I’m not really certain which reigned in the end.

That day in detention seemed like it would be the worst experience of my school career (I tend to exaggerate), but when Mr. Armstrong questioned the presence of Dallon’s pills in his pocket, then confiscating them, I felt as relieved as ever, because he wouldn’t be injuring himself any longer.

But then, without his placebo pills, Dallon decided that it was high time to transfer towards pills that aren’t as placebo as their predecessors, and that’s where he stumbled and fell and scared the living shit out of me, so in a way I’m unsure if Mr. Armstrong made the right choice.

I’m not saying Mr. Armstrong did anything wrong, because it was just an honest mistake. No one can predict the future, not even me, and that’s why I was unable to distinguish whether or not Dallon was dying or he was just exercising his plethora of psychological experiments in a dangerous manner that he shouldn’t, and both are immoral, and both are frightening, and both are risky, but both are what he was enduring simultaneously, so it’s not really an “either” debate.

It’s not like Mr. Armstrong needs to know this information, as it will surely spread to him soon enough, whether that’s by ear or in the morning announcements or by the absence in his math class or when my head hangs low enough while sitting in my desk that my scalp is perpendicular to him and my tears drip vertically onto the lap that used to hold Dallon but now only holds my view. However, I am forcing myself to provide him with an earnest approach to this before rumors of Dallon’s dreadful death fester into strongly believed misconceptions, and as much as I’ve been spun off kilter from this event, I cannot simply allow Dallon to be slandered by unjustified thoughts of the very people who have always hated him because he was different; he doesn’t deserve something like that, even though he’s dead, _especially_ because he’s dead, as his peers’ malevolence towards him was part of the reason why I am obligating myself to stop at Mr. Armstrong’s room to tell him that _mon petit ami_ belongs to the cold of a corpse.

I’m nervous as hell, which is logical for the ghastly circumstances, and I don’t quite want to confront the man who should only be my math teacher but is now my confidant to discuss a suicidal headcase who no longer exists in anywhere other than the morgue, whose location I do not know because I’d rather not weep over blackened eyes and alabaster flesh and the person I used to be familiar with but am just a mortal he detests. Mr. Armstrong imaginably isn’t the best teacher to go to when you’re in need of emotional support, seeing as he reads comics for fun and imitates squealing guitar noises with his mouth while he’s reading those comics, but no other teacher would have any idea what I’m talking about, and though the guidance counselor may offer better advice, I’d have to explain to him that this nice kid he’s adored since the beginning of the school year is now rotting in an exotic destination, and he’ll learn the details soon enough. News spreads quickly around this school, ‘cause we’re all out to get each other, and Spencer will no doubt be targeting me more than usual today like it’s Black Friday in the department stores of America.

For now I can hide in the protection of Mr. Armstrong’s classroom, if only briefly before I disintegrate into a host for the waterworks, but I suppose this isn’t exactly a reprieve, because I’ll be as anxious as I’ve ever been, perpetually and more so right now, but it’s a safer alternative to being beaten up by high schoolers who have nothing better to do with their hormonal lives, but maybe homework is a ramification or karma, if you will, for their poor judgment.

I waver outside of Mr. Armstrong’s room for longer than I should, for this is simple, right? I shouldn’t be scared of this man. He’s just my math teacher, nothing more and nothing less, though he’s also the person to whom I’m coming to share the horrible news of what has occurred to the friend I thought would be the first happy artist. I’m so foolish, and Dallon knew it, too. In fact, he utilized remaining space on his parting note to inform me of this fact, and I don’t want to be a fool in his perception, even if he’s dead, and a fool wouldn’t hesitate behind someone’s door, someone who isn’t as petrifying as the other teachers can be.

Dallon is rotting in a cool facility that hasn’t learned his name yet and probably never will, but Dallon would’ve hoped that I could overcome my anxiety and speak to people, so with a courageous breath, that’s what I accomplish.

Knocking upon the polished mahogany of the door, matching the rest of its kind plugged into the laterals of the hallway, I bravely step into Mr. Armstrong’s classroom as the warm air partially attributed to my phobia expires into an ice likening to the morgue in which Dallon decomposes. Mr. Armstrong has always preferred to be kin with the North Pole, despite his pupils’ pleas for the sensations of the desert in which they actually live instead of the tundras of Greenland in which they _do not_ live, but he is unapologetic about his thermometer settings, and I surmise it’ll work wonders for my anxiety symptoms, now blaring alert sirens in my throbbing head.

Once again Mr. Armstrong is poring over one of his beloved comics, this time a Marvel _Deadpool_ edition, which he has professed his love for on many occasions and has convinced a few of the nerd boys to drop their homophobia to enjoy the adventures of the pansexual villain on a quest for vengeance, and when he detects the shift in the room’s aura, he glances up from his comic to address me, brows snipping a high point on his forehead.

“Brendon,” he greets with a tone suspended right above a statement and far below a question, and he folds his comic book back into the desk and removes his legs from the table to regain a professional composure that I don’t need, because by the time we’re finished with this conversation, none of us will lie in a professional composure whatsoever. “Did you need help on the homework? I feel that it was a tad too difficult for what I’ve been teaching you, so—”

“No, it’s not the math homework.” My voice rips through my teacher’s frantic rambling with a blade of seriousness, of grief and suppressing tears.

Mr. Armstrong adds even more diplomacy to his countenance, now straightening his posture. “Oh?”

“It’s Dallon Weekes. You know, the new kid from France.”

“Wasn’t he the one I took the meds from?” Mr. Armstrong flicks his finger against the air, searching for his memories of my friend.

“Yeah, that was him.”

He smiles, gratified by his knowledge of prior events. “So what’s up with the guy?”

So maybe this wasn’t as easy as I had foretold, because now my tongue is worn from the sandy plains of Nevada, and my palms are extracting nervousness from my skin, and my throat embraces itself to close its gates. Sliding past the doorway was the first step, but how did I think I could survive the part where I tell my own teacher that my best friend just freaking killed himself recently?

Dallon would’ve wanted me to be strong — said it in his letter, too, and noted that I’m stronger now than he ever was, although that’s not much of a consolation, because both of us are smoldering in the hellfire of our own minds, but that’s beside the point. I _must_ be strong, because the only remembrance I can maintain is the one that commanded me to be that warrior, to fight back against the monster, so I prepare myself to speak, laborious as it is.

I clear my throat, eyes to the floor. “He’s dead.” It’s only a faint whisper, the scratching of tree branches on a window like delicate fingers gliding through delicate hair, but Mr. Armstrong decodes my murmuring, and his face droops in dejection.

“I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Armstrong shouldn’t be sorry, because he barely even knew Dallon beyond detention where all the immoral kids occupy space, but he’s just a human with a store of stock phrases, and people have concluded that utilizing them constantly is the best way to go.

I attempt to brush it off in order to uphold my fragile masculinity to make it seem like it’s not as fragile as it is, but all I am is lazy. “Yeah, it’s a tragedy, but I swear I’m fine. I’m just figuring things out.”

“Figuring what out?”

“Figuring out why I was so dependent on him when I could’ve stayed away. I could’ve avoided this man, but I didn’t, because there was something about those blue jay eyes that publicized that it would all be okay, but that’s a lie, a straight up lie, but those eyes have lied to me on many occasions before, and I was just as gullible each time as I am now, but I’m confident in saying that those blue jay eyes are no longer blue jay, only paved over by the sharp hue of rubble in the catacombs of a hospital, and I’ve started to lie to _myself_ in saying that I’m okay, because I’m not okay, and I will _never_ be okay, but I’m just seeking some sort of security in my life, and hypocrisy is the perfect match.”

“Brendon, you’re not a hypocrite.”

He’s a liar, too, but he’s also a teacher, and I can’t tell him that or else I’ll risk expulsion or another detention where life went downhill for Dallon and me, so I improvise.

I stare at Mr. Armstrong for a prolonged moment, then turning away, ashamed. “I have to get to class.”

That, at least, is not a lie.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Mr. Armstrong is rad but this chapter is sad (kind of, not really))))
> 
> Quitar: do you draw fan art
> 
> Aitar: I've been trying to draw but idk man
> 
> ~Dakartist


	32. I made a meme today

Sitting outside the coffee shop Dallon and Ryan and I used to visit to indulge in art and teenage angst in the form of words, now all alone, is the worst possible feeling in the world. The poisonous marrow has been hastily drained from the usually lively atmosphere, and it only looks deserted and gloomy, despite the abundance of people stabilized around every table outside as if to join me, and grey clouds wilt against the sky I had thought only moments earlier to be bright and cheery and full of the coffee shop’s general glee, and now the fragrance of steaming coffee that I love endlessly in the morning is but an unrelenting annoyance to my nose, brittle like skin dried by the chlorine from the pool in which I want to drown myself right now.

It feels like this is the ending scene of a movie, the melancholic scenario that strikes the watcher’s eyes for tears like they’re gold mines, where the protagonist returns to a location so familiar to them that it leaked bittersweet nostalgia in every place it installed pores, and then the protagonist finds himself alone, because their friends have all been slain on the variegated battlefields of the story plot, and sooner or later they begin to cry with no one to console them, because obviously the people who could’ve would all be dead most likely from choices the protagonist himself made, so if I fit so perfectly inside that metaphor, did I doom my friends by effect? What choice did I make to bring me to this coffee shop all alone?

It’s a bit skewed, I might say, because Ryan could be here if I had allowed him to be, but I’m such a drama queen who needs their solitude, and Ryan’s jumpy personality would be dissonant with the storm I’m brewing inside my vengeful mind. More so, I didn’t want him to see me cry, which I evidently will by the time I’ve thought through the timeline of Dallon’s ubiquitous grace in my life, as my masculinity is too fucking fragile for this, too fucking fragile to lose someone without a goodbye when he was still alive, too fucking fragile to even admit the emotions that I know everyone has, because I am a weakling, and I am a coward, and I am everything that Dallon didn’t need, and now he’s gone, so that doesn’t really matter anyway, as he won’t have to see me any more than he did.

I wonder how he survived around me. That must’ve been incredibly difficult, and I have no idea how he did it, because I’m an insufferable little brat who doesn’t deserve Dallon in the slightest, but he was here, and I’m just so fucking confused as to _why_. Why would he stick around for this wreck of a person? Why would he share his afflictions with me not in some wild case of _folie à deux_ but in the openness that’s expected in a relationship of all things? Why did we fit so beautifully together in our first week with each other to just fall apart in the end?

All these questions and more are the things I want to ask Dallon, because there’s so much bewilderment in this raging cesspool, but how can I speak to him when even in life he did not hang around to listen to me? This entire relationship was just a wailing baby derived out of our misery and hysteria, and we were forced to take care of it as if it were something we loved, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You’re supposed to love your child, _right_?

Wrong, because we didn’t even love ourselves, and we both knew that we’ve always been so selfish to the point where we prioritize our own affairs astronomically higher than anything else with the potential for equal importance, and it’s not the ordinary “tend to yourself before others” maxim, because once we tended to ourselves we simply forgot about the others.

Primarily Dallon, because I can assure you that not once did he think about me when deciding whether or not to kill himself, whether or not to strip himself of life in a location whose coordinates I do not know, whether or not to _let_ me know. And no, it doesn’t seem like he was just trying to spare me the pain, because without this knowledge of his whereabouts, I’m looping through insanity attempting to figure out the mystery of his disappearance that wasn’t, in fact, the grocery store, and it’s agonizing enough.

Dallon said that _I_ was the liar, and I still am, I suppose, but the grocery store is very different than the scene of an overdose, and anyone can see that, so actually he’s a liar, too. The best way to describe this is in a web of lies strung together until bits and pieces cancel each other out so that a fragment of truth escapes every now and then and ruins us all over, because we lied to each other, and we lied so fucking much, and we were hoping that through more lies we could avoid this fact.

And then, of course, we would pivot our emotions around and confess that we love each other dearly, that nothing can alter the size or shape of our devotion to opposite lovers preparing to suffocate themselves with a smile debauching their already paling faces, and we believed the vagaries, too, believed in them like we never believed in ourselves.

Dallon is dead because of that lack of a belief in his abilities, which I’ve always had but never him, and I know that he is magnificent in his art and his character. I know it all, and yes, it’s perfectly normal for someone to not know everything about the person they love, and I wish it were that way for me, but as much as I attempt to rid my mind of pointless facts about a person who’s fucking dead, I still know wholeheartedly that Dallon is left-handed, that Dallon hates sports with a passion, that Dallon loved me just as much as I loved him yet failed to mention that his love for his pills never tampered with that statement so he could keep on devoting his death to them.

However, I suppose it’s justifiable in a sense, because it was something I desperately needed, as if each detail I retained about him could mold him into a figure of realism to make it seem like he’s alive and present in other places besides my heart, and certainly this coffee shop is a place where he is clearly absent, and that notion needs to stop berating me for my childish whims of wanting Dallon back with me.

It’s making me feel unwelcome, even in this landscape welded dreary from my mental turmoil, so I abandon my coffee cup, having already paid the bill an hour ago and stayed because of boredom and a blank stare into the distance that I simply could not refuse, and not even the startled shrieking of the metal chair upon the pavement affects me like it usually does, how it clenches my bones in a vibrating hurricane. I’m numb, and numb people enjoy wandering without a desired end point, so I wander onto the street to discover something of notable use, though still keeping my distance from the blurred automobiles racing down the melanoid expanse of rock and tar as they give no shits about me, _anything_ about me. Not the fact that my friend just fucking killed himself, not the irreversible roll in my spine, not my limbs clawing at the pavement from tiredness, not any of it, and I guess I shouldn’t expect them to, but the underlying matter is that they are so distant from me, and they have their own lives where Dallon does not.

Giggling to myself for the first time in a few days, I remember that this is a bit like how I walked down the street ten years ago, a scowl soiling my face and my feet drilling into the concrete. However, I’m _not_ the same person I was ten years ago, because a lot changes in a decade, but then I find myself kicking stray rocks around the road just to obtain power as a schoolboy would, and I wonder if that’s really the worst thing I’m doing wrong, if nothing ever shifted in me at all.

I should stop thinking about my ponderous and treacherous childhood, because I was no doubt scarred by it, bullying and everything else with my parents and all that convoluted shit that I don’t want to reflect on, so I spend only a few more dismal moments on it before shuddering and moving on to an alleyway that looks promising enough for my meandering quest.

And in that alleyway is where I find asylum. In that alleyway is where I find Dallon’s pills. In that alleyway is where I find the freedom from the web of lies. In that alleyway is where I find peace in the dead.

In that alleyway is where I find that my heart is shattering.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is the last chapter
> 
> sayonara, weeaboo shits
> 
> see you at the sequel
> 
> Queho: have you ever made a meme?
> 
> Aeho: I made one between me and my friend, where I was dancing and saying "no" over and over and now we say that every time we need to say no
> 
> ~DaNOta


End file.
